Robin Hobb - Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin

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Royal Assassin

PROLOGUE

Dreams and Awakenings

WHY IS IT forbidden to write down specific knowledge of the magics? Perhaps

because we all fear that such knowledge would fall into the hands of one not

worthy to use it. Certainly there has always been a system of apprenticeship to

ensure that specific knowledge of magic is passed only to those trained and

judged worthy of such knowledge. While this seems a laudable attempt to protect

us from unworthy practitioners of arcane lore, it ignores the fact that the

magics are not derived from this specific knowledge. The predilection for a

certain type of magic is either inborn or lacking. For instance, the ability for

the magics known as the Skill is tied closely to blood relationship to the royal

Farseer line, though it may also occur as a "wild strain " among folk whose

ancestors came from both the inland tribes and the Outislanders. One trained in

the Skill is able to reach out to another's mind, no matter how distant, and

know what he is thinking. Those who are strongly Skilled can influence that

thinking, or have converse with that person. For the conducting of a battle, or

the gathering of information, it is a most useful tool.

Folklore tells of an even older magic, much despised now, known as the Wit.

Few will admit a talent for this magic, hence it is always said to be the

province of the folk in the next valley, or the ones who live on the other side

of the far ridge. I suspect it was once the natural magic of those who lived on

the land as hunters rather than as settled folk; a magic for those who felt

kinship with the wild beasts of the woods. The Wit, it is said, gave one the

ability to speak the tongues of the beasts. It was also warned that those who

practiced the Wit too long or too well became whatever beast they had bonded to.

But this may be only legend.

There are the Hedge magics, though I have never been able to determine the

source of this name. These are magics both verified and suspect, including palm

reading, water gazing, the interpretation of crystal reflections, and a host of

other magics that attempt to predict the future. In a separate unnamed category

are the magics that cause physical effects, such as invisibility, levitation,

giving motion or life to inanimate objects-all the magics of the old legends,

from the Flying Chair of the Widow's Son to the North Wind's Magic Tablecloth. I

know of no people who claim these magics as their own. They seem to be solely

the stuff of legend, ascribed to folk living in ancient times or distant places,

or beings of mythical or near-mythical reputation: dragons, giants, the

Elderlings, the Others, pecksies.

I pause to clean my pen. My writing wanders from spidery to blobbish on this

poor paper. But I will not use good parchment for these words; not yet. I am not

sure they should be written. I ask myself, why put this to paper at all? Will

not this knowledge be passed down by word of mouth to those who are worthy?

Perhaps. But perhaps not. What we take for granted now, the knowing of these

things, may be a wonder and a mystery someday to our descendants.

There is very little in any of the libraries on magic. I work laboriously,

tracing a thread of knowledge through a patchwork quilt of information. I find

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scattered references, passing allusions, but that is all. I have gathered it,

over these last few years, and stored it in my head, always intending to commit

my knowledge to paper. I will put down what I know from my own experience, as

well as what I have ferreted out. Perhaps to provide answers for some other poor

fool, in times to come, who might find himself as battered by the warring of the

magics within him as I have been.

But when I sit down to the task, I hesitate. Who am I to set my will against

the wisdom of those who have gone before me? Shall I set down in plain lettering

the methods by which a Witgifted one can expand her range, or can bond a

creature to himself? Shall I detail the training one must undergo before being

recognized as a Skilled one? The Hedge wizardries and legendary magics have

never been mine. Have I any right to dig out their secrets and pin them to paper

like so many butterflies or leaves collected for study?

I try to consider what one might do with such knowledge, unjustly gained. It

leads me to consider what this knowledge has gained for me. Power, wealth, the

love of a woman? I mock myself. Neither the Skill nor the Wit has ever offered

any such to me. Or if they did, I had not the sense nor ambition to seize them

when offered.

Power. I do not think I ever wanted it for its own sake. I thirsted for it,

sometimes, when I was ground down, or when those close to me suffered beneath

ones who abused their powers. Wealth. I never really considered it. From the

moment that I, his bastard grandson, pledged myself to King Shrewd, he always

saw that all my needs were fulfilled. I had plenty to eat, more education than I

sometimes cared for, clothes both simple and those annoyingly fashionable, and

often enough a coin or two of my own to spend. Growing up in Buckkeep, that was

wealth enough and more than most boys in Buckkeep Town could claim. Love? Well.

My horse Sooty was fond enough of me, in her own placid way. I had the

truehearted loyalty of a hound named Nosy, and that took him to his grave. I was

given the fiercest of loves by a terrier pup, and it was likewise the death of

him. I wince to think of the price willingly paid for loving me.

Always I have possessed the loneliness of one raised amid intrigues and

clustering secrets, the isolation of a boy who cannot trust the completeness of

his heart to anyone. I could not go to Fedwren, the court scribe, who praised me

for my neat lettering and well-inked illustrations, and confide that I was

already apprenticed to the royal assassin, and thus could not follow his writing

trade. Nor could I divulge to Chade, my master in the Diplomacy of the Knife,

the frustrating brutality I endured trying to learn the ways of the Skill from

Galen the Skill Master. And to no one did I dare speak openly of my emerging

proclivity for the Wit, the ancient beast magic, said to be a perversion and a

taint to any who used it.

Not even to Molly.

Molly was that most cherished of items: a genuine refuge. She had absolutely

nothing to do with my day-to-day life. It was not just that she was female,

though that was mystery enough to me. I was raised almost entirely in the

company of men, bereft not only of my natural mother and father, but of any

blood relations that would openly acknowledge me. As a child, my care was

entrusted to Burrich, the gruff stablemaster who had once been my father's

right-hand man. The stable hands and the guards were my daily companions. Then

as now, there were women in the guard companies, though not so many then as now.

But like their male comrades, they had duties to perform, and lives and families

of their own when they were not on watch. I could not claim their time. I had no

mother, nor sisters or aunts of my own. There were no women who offered me the

special tenderness said to be the province of women.

None save Molly.

She was but a year or two older than myself, and growing the same way a

sprig of greenery forces its way up through a gap in the cobblestones. Neither

her father's near-constant drunkenness and frequent brutality nor the grinding

chores of a child trying to maintain the pretense of both home and family

business could crush her. When I first met her, she was as wild and wary as a

fox cub. Molly Nosebleed she was called among the street children. She often

bore the marks of the beatings her father gave her. Despite his cruelty, she

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cared for him. I never understood that. He would grumble and berate her even as

she tottered him home after one of his binges and put him to bed. And when he

awoke, he never had any remorse for his drunkenness and harsh words. There were

only more criticisms: Why hadn't the chandlery been swept and fresh strewing

herbs put on the floor? Why hadn't she tended the beehives, when they were

nearly out of honey to sell? Why had she let the fire go out under the tallow

pot? I was mute witness more times than I care to remember.

But through it all, Molly grew. She flowered, one sudden summer, into a

young woman who left me in awe of her capable ways and womanly charms. For her

part, she seemed totally unaware of how her eyes could meet mine and turn my

tongue to leather in my mouth. No magic I possessed, no Skill, no Wit, was proof

against the accidental touch of her hand against mine, nor could defend me

against the awkwardness that overwhelmed me at the quirk of her smile.

Should I catalog her hair flowing with the wind, or detail how the color of

her eyes shifted from dark amber to rich brown depending on her mood and the

color of her gown? I would catch a glimpse of her scarlet skirts and red shawl

among the market throng, and suddenly be aware of no one else. These are magics

I witnessed, and though I might set them down on paper, no other could ever work

them with such skill.

How did I court her? With a boy's clumsy gallantries, gaping after her like

a simpleton watching the whirling disks of a juggler. She knew I loved her

before I did. And she let me court her, although I was a few years younger than

she, and not one of the town boys and possessed of small prospects as far as she

knew. She thought I was the scribe's errand boy, a part-time helper in the

stables, a Keep runner. She never suspected I was the Bastard, the

unacknowledged son that had toppled Prince Chivalry from his place in the line

of succession. That alone was a big enough secret. Of my magics and my other

profession, she knew nothing.

Maybe that was why I could love her.

It was certainly why I lost her.

I let the secrets and failures and pains of my other lives keep me too busy.

There were magics to learn, secrets to ferret out, men to kill, intrigues to

survive. Surrounded by them, it never occurred to me that I could turn to Molly

for a measure of the hope and understanding that eluded me everywhere else.

She was apart from these things, unsullied by them. I carefully preserved

her from any touch of them. I never tried to draw her into my world. Instead, I

went to hers, to the fishing and shipping port town where she sold candles and

honey in her shop, and shopped in the market, and, sometimes, walked on the

beaches with me. To me, it was enough that she existed for me to love. I did not

even dare to hope she might return that feeling.

There came a time when my training in the Skill ground me into a misery so

deep I did not think I could survive it. I could not forgive myself for being

unable to learn it; I could not imagine that my failure might not matter to

others. I cloaked my despair in surly withdrawal. I let the long weeks pass, and

never saw her or even sent her word that I thought of her. Finally, when there

was no one else that I could turn to, I sought her. Too late. I arrived at the

Beebalm Chandlery in Buckkeep Town one afternoon, gifts in hand, in time to see

her leaving. Not alone. With Jade, a fine broad-chested seaman, with a bold

earring in one ear and the sure masculinity of his superior years. Unnoticed,

defeated, I slunk away and watched them walk off arm in arm. I watched her go,

and I let her go, and in the months that followed, I tried to convince myself

that my heart had let her go as well. I wonder what would have happened if I had

run after them that afternoon, if I had begged one last word of her. Odd, to

think of so many events turning upon a boy's misplaced pride and his schooled

acceptance of defeats. I set her out of my thoughts, and spoke of her to no one.

I got on with my life.

King Shrewd sent me as his assassin with a great caravan of folk going to

witness the pledging of the Mountain Princess Kettricken as Prince Verity's

bride. My mission was to quietly cause the death of her older brother, Prince

Rurisk, subtly of course, so that she would be left the sole heir to the

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Mountain throne. But what I found when I arrived there was a web of deceit and

lies engineered by my youngest uncle, Prince Regal, who hoped to topple Verity

from the line of succession and claim the Princess as his own bride. I was the

pawn he would sacrifice for this goal; and I was the pawn who instead toppled

the game pieces around him, bringing his wrath and vengeance down on myself, but

saving the crown and the Princess for Prince Verity. I do not think this was

heroism. Nor do I think it was petty spite wreaked on one who had always bullied

and belittled me. It was the act of a boy becoming a man, and doing what I had

sworn to do years before I comprehended the cost of such an oath. The price was

my healthy young body, so long taken for granted.

Long after I had defeated Regal's plot, I lingered in a sickbed in the

Mountain Kingdom. But finally a morning came when I awoke and believed that my

long illness was finally over. Burrich had decided I was recovered enough to

begin the long journey back home to the Six Duchies. Princess Kettricken and her

entourage had left for Buckkeep weeks before, when the weather was still fine.

Now winter snows already smothered the higher parts of the Mountain Kingdom. If

we did not leave Jhaampe soon, we would be forced to winter there. I was up

early that morning, doing my final packing, when the first small tremors began.

Resolutely, I ignored them. I was just shaky, I told myself, with not having

eaten breakfast yet, and the excitement of the journey home. I donned the

garments that Jonqui had furnished for our winter journey through the Mountains

and across the plains. For me there was a long red shirt, padded with wool

quilted into it. The quilted trousers were green, but embroidered with red at

the waist and cuffs. The boots were soft, almost shapeless until my feet were

laced inside them. They were like sacks of soft leather, padded with sheared

wool and trimmed with fur. They fastened to the feet with long wrappings of

leather strips. My trembling fingers made tying them a difficult task. Jonqui

had told us they were wonderful for the dry snow of the mountains, but to beware

of getting them wet.

There was a looking glass in the room. At first, I smiled at my reflection.

Not even King Shrewd's fool dressed as gaily as this. But above the bright

garments, my face was thin and pale, making my dark eyes too large, while my

fever-shorn hair, black and bristly, stood up like a dog's hackles. My illness

had ravaged me. But I told myself I was finally on my way home. I turned aside

from the mirror. As I packed the few small gifts I had selected to take home to

my friends, the unsteadiness grew in my hands.

For the last time Burrich, Hands, and I sat down to break fast with Jonqui.

I thanked her once again for all she had done toward healing me. I picked up a

spoon for the porridge, and my hand gave a twitch. I dropped it. I watched the

silvery shape fall and fell after it.

The next thing I remember is the shadowy corners of the bedroom. I lay for a

long time, not moving or speaking. I went from a state of emptiness to knowing I

had had another seizure. It had passed; both body and mind were mine to command

once more. But I no longer wanted them. At fifteen years old, an age when most

were coming into their full strength, I could no longer trust my body to perform

the simplest task. It was damaged, and I rejected it fiercely. I felt savagely

vindictive toward the flesh and bone that enclosed me, and wished for some way

to express my raging disappointment. Why couldn't I heal? Why hadn't I

recovered?

"It's going to take time, that's all. Wait until half a year has passed

since the day you were damaged. Then assess yourself." It was Jonqui the healer.

She was sitting near the fireplace, but her chair was drawn back into the

shadows. I hadn't noticed her until she spoke. She rose slowly, as if the winter

made her bones ache, and came to stand beside my bed.

"I don't want to live like an old man."

She pursed her lips. "Sooner or later you will have to. At least, I so wish

that you will survive that many years. I am old, and so is my brother King Eyod.

We do not find it so great a burden."

"I should not mind an old man's body if the years had earned it for me. But

I can't go on like this."

She shook her head, puzzled. "Of course you can. Healing is tedious

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sometimes, but to say that you cannot go on ... I do not understand. It is,

perhaps, a difference in our languages?"

I took a breath to speak, but at that moment Burrich came in. "Awake?

Feeling better?"

"Awake. Not feeling better," I grumbled. Even to myself, I sounded like a

fretful child. Burrich and Jonqui exchanged glances over me. She came to the

bedside, patted my shoulder, and then left the room silently. Their obvious

tolerance was galling, and my impotent anger rose like a tide. "Why can't you

heal me?" I demanded of Burrich.

He was taken aback by the accusation in my question. "It's not that simple,"

he began.

"Why not?" I hauled myself up straight in the bed. "I've seen you cure all

manner of ailments in beasts. Sickness, broken bones, worms, mange ... you're

stablemaster, and I've seen you treat them all. Why can't you cure me?"

"You're not a dog, Fitz," Burrich said quietly. "It's simpler with a beast,

when it's seriously ill. I've taken drastic measures, sometimes, telling myself,

well, if the animal dies, at least it's not suffering anymore, and this may heal

it. I can't do that with you. You're not a beast."

"That's no answer! Half the time the guards come to you instead of the

healer. You took the head of an arrow out of Den. You laid his whole arm open to

do it! When the healer said that Greydin's foot was too infected and she'd have

to lose it, she came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was

saying the infection would spread and she'd die and it would be your fault."

Burrich folded his lips, quelling his temper. If I'd been healthy, I'd have

been wary of his wrath. But his restraint with me during my convalescence had

made me bold. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled. "Those were

risky healings, yes. But the folk who wanted them done knew the risks. And," he

said, raising his voice to cover the objection I'd been about to utter, "they

were simple things. I knew the cause. Take out the arrowhead and haft from his

arm and clean it up. Poultice and draw the infection from Greydin's foot. But

your sickness isn't that simple. Neither Jonqui nor I really know what's wrong

with you. Is it the aftermath of the poison Kettricken fed you when she thought

you had come to kill her brother? Is this the effects of the poisoned wine that

Regal arranged for you? Or is it from the beating you took afterward? From being

near drowned? Or did all those things combine to do this to you? We don't know,

and so we don't know how to cure you. We just don't know."

His voice clenched on his last words, and I suddenly saw how his sympathy

for me overlay his frustration. He paced a few steps, then halted to stare into

the fire. "We've talked long about it. Jonqui has much in her Mountain lore that

I have never heard of before. And I've told her of cures I know. But we both

agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You're in no danger of

dying that we can see. Possibly, in time, your own body can cast out the last

vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever damage was done inside you."

"Or," I added quietly, "it's possible that I'll be this way the rest of my

life. That the poison or the beating damaged something permanently. Damn Regal,

to kick me like that when I was trussed already."

Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he sagged into the chair in the

shadows. Defeat was in his voice. "Yes. That is just as possible as the other.

But don't you see we have no choice? I could physick you to try to force the

poison out of your body. But if it's damage, not poison, all I would do was

weaken you, so that your body's own healing would take that much longer." He

stared into the flames, and lifted a hand to touch a streak of white at his

temple. I was not the only one who'd fallen to Regal's treachery. Burrich

himself was but newly recovered from a skull blow that would have killed anyone

less thickheaded than he. I knew he had endured long days of dizziness and

blurred vision. I did not recall he had complained at all. I had the decency to

feel a bit of shame.

"So what do I do?"

Burrich started as if roused from dozing. "What we've been doing. Wait. Eat.

Rest. Be easy on yourself. And see what happens. Is that so terrible?"

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I ignored his question. "And if I don't get better? If I just stay like

this, where the tremors or fits can come over me at any time?"

His answer was slow in coming. "Live with it. Many folk have to live with

worse. Most of the time you're fine. You're not blind. You're not paralyzed.

You've your wits, still. Stop defining yourself by what you can't do. Why don't

you consider what you didn't lose?"

"What I didn't lose? What I didn't lose?" My anger rose like a covey of

birds taking flight and likewise driven by panic. "I'm helpless, Burrich. I

can't go back to Buckkeep like this! I'm useless. I'm worse than useless, I'm a

waiting victim. If I could go back and batter Regal into a pulp, that might be

worth it. Instead, I will have to sit at table with Prince Regal, to be civil

and deferential to a man who plotted to overthrow Verity and kill me as an added

spice. I can't endure him seeing me tremble with weakness, or suddenly fall in a

seizure. I don't want to see him smile at what he has made me; I don't want to

watch him savor his triumph. He will try to kill me again. We both know that.

Perhaps he has learned he is no match for Verity, perhaps he will respect his

older brother's reign and new wife. But I doubt he will extend that to me. I'll

be one more way he can strike at Verity. And when he comes, what shall I be

doing? Sitting by the fire like a palsied old man, doing nothing. Nothing! All

I've been trained for, all Hod's weaponry instruction, all Fedwren's careful

teachings about lettering, even all you've taught me about taking care of

beasts! All a waste! I can do none of it. I'm just a bastard again, Burrich. And

someone once told me that a royal bastard is only kept alive so long as he is

useful." I was practically shouting at him as I said the last words. But even in

my fury and despair, I did not speak aloud of Chade and my training as an

assassin. At that, too, I was useless now. All my stealth and sleight of hand,

all the precise ways to kill a man by touch, the painstaking mixing of poisons,

all were denied me by my own rattling body.

Burrich sat quietly, hearing me out. When my breath and my anger ran out and

I sat gasping in my bed, clasping my traitorously trembling hands together, he

spoke calmly.

"So. Are you saying we don't go back to Buckkeep?"

That put me off balance. "We?"

"My life is pledged to the man who wears that earring. There's a long story

behind that, one that perhaps I'll tell you someday. Patience had no right to

give it to you. I thought it had gone with Prince Chivalry to his grave. She

probably thought it just a simple piece of jewelry her husband had worn, hers to

keep or to give. In any wise, you wear it now. Where you go, I follow."

I lifted my hand to the bauble. It was a tiny blue stone caught up in a web

of silver net. I started to unfasten it.

"Don't do that," Burrich said. The words were quiet, deeper than a dog's

growl. But his voice held both threat and command. I dropped my hand away,

unable to question him on this at least. It felt strange that the man who had

watched over me since I was an abandoned child now put his future into my hands.

Yet there he sat before the fire and waited for my words. I studied what I could

see of him in the dance of firelight. He had once seemed a surly giant to me,

dark and threatening, but also a savage protector. Now, for perhaps the first

time, I studied him as a man. The dark hair and eyes were prevalent in those who

carried Outislander blood, and in this we resembled each other. But his eyes

were brown, not black, and the wind brought a redness to his cheeks above his

curling beard that bespoke a fairer ancestor somewhere. When he walked, he

limped, very noticeably on cold days. It was the legacy of turning aside a boar

that had been trying to kill Chivalry. He was not so big as he had once seemed

to me. If I kept on growing, I would probably be taller than he before another

year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but instead had a compactness to him

that was a readiness of both muscle and mind. It was not his size that had made

him both feared and respected at Buckkeep, but his black temper and his

tenacity. Once, when I was very young, I had asked him if he had ever lost a

fight. He had just subdued a willful young stallion and was in the stall with

him, calming him. Burrich had grinned, teeth showing white as a wolf's. The

sweat had stood out in droplets on his forehead and was running down his cheeks

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into his dark beard. He spoke to me over the side of the stall. "Lost a fight?"

he'd asked, still out of breath. "The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz.

That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the

horse."

I wondered if I were a fight he had to win. He'd often told me that I was

the last task Chivalry had given him. My father had abdicated the throne, shamed

by my existence. Yet he'd given me over to this man, and told him to raise me

well. Maybe Burrich thought he hadn't finished that task yet.

"What do you think I should do?" I asked humbly. Neither the words nor the

humility came easily.

"Heal," he said after a few moments. "Take the time to heal. It can't be

forced." He glanced down at his own legs stretched toward the fire. Something

not a smile twisted his lips.

"Do you think we should go back?" I pressed.

He leaned back into the chair. He crossed his booted feet at the ankle and

stared into the fire. He took a long time answering. But finally he said, almost

reluctantly, "If we don't, Regal will think he has won. And he will try to kill

Verity. Or at least do whatever he thinks he must to make a grab for his

brother's crown. I am sworn to my king, Fitz, as are you. Right now that is King

Shrewd. But Verity is king-in-waiting. I don't think it right that he should

have waited in vain."

"He has other soldiers, more capable than I."

"Does that free you from your promise?"

"You argue like a priest."

"I don't argue at all. I merely asked you a question. And one other. What do

you forsake, if you leave Buckkeep behind?"

It was my turn to fall silent. I did think of my king, and all I had sworn

to him. I thought of Prince Verity, and his bluff heartiness and open ways with

me. I recalled old Chade and his slow smile when I had finally mastered some

arcane bit of lore. Lady Patience and her maid Lacey, Fedwren and Hod, even Cook

and Mistress Hasty the seamstress. There were not so many folk that had cared

for me, but that made them more significant, not less. I would miss all of them

if I never went back to Buckkeep. But what leaped up in me like an ember

rekindled was my memory of Molly. And somehow, I found myself speaking of her to

Burrich, and him just nodding as I spilled out the whole story.

When he did speak, he told me only that he had heard that the Beebalm

Chandlery closed when the old drunkard that owned it had died in debt. His

daughter had been forced to go to relatives in another town. He did not know

what town, but he was certain I could find it out, if I were determined. "Know

your heart before you do, Fitz," he added. "If you've nothing to offer her, let

her go. Are you crippled? Only if you decide so. But if you're determined that

you're a cripple now, then perhaps you've no right to go and seek her out. I

don't think you'd want her pity. It's a poor substitute for love." And then he

rose and left me, to stare into the fire and think.

Was I a cripple? Had I lost? My body jangled like badly tuned harp strings.

That was true. But my will, not Regal's, had prevailed. My prince Verity was

still in line for the Six Duchies throne, and the Mountain Princess was his wife

now. Did I dread Regal smirking over my trembling hands? Could I not smirk back

at he who would never be king? A savage satisfaction welled up in me. Burrich

was right. I had not lost. But I could make sure that Regal knew I had won.

If I had won against Regal, could I not win Molly as well? What stood

between her and me? Jade? But Burrich had heard she had left Buckkeep Town, not

wed. Gone penniless to live with relatives. Shame upon him, had Jade let her do

so. I would seek her out, I would find her and win her. Molly, with her hair

loose and blowing, Molly with her bright red skirts and cloak, bold as a

red-robber bird, and eyes as bright. The thought of her sent a shiver down my

spine. I smiled to myself, and then felt my lips set like a rictus, and the

shiver become a shuddering. My body spasmed and the back of my head rebounded

sharply off the bedstead. I cried out involuntarily, a gargling wordless cry.

In an instant Jonqui was there, calling Burrich back, and then they were

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both holding down my flailing limbs. Burrich's body weight was flung atop me as

he strove to restrain my thrashing. And then I was gone.

I came out of blackness into light, like surfacing from a deep dive into

warm waters. The deep down of the feather bed cradled me, the blankets were soft

and warm. I felt safe. For a moment all was peaceful. I lay quiescently, almost

feeling good.

"Fitz?" Burrich asked, leaning over me.

The world came back. I knew myself a mangled, pitiful thing, a puppet with

half its strings tangled or a horse with a severed tendon. I would never be as I

was before; there was no place left for me in the world I had once inhabited.

Burrich had said pity is a poor substitute for love. I wanted pity from none of

them.

"Burrich."

He leaned closer over me. "It wasn't that bad," he lied. "Just rest now.

Tomorrow-"

"Tomorrow you leave for Buckkeep," I told him.

He frowned. "Let's take it slowly. Give yourself a few days to recover, and

then we'll-"

"No." I dragged myself up to a sitting position. I put every bit of strength

I had into the words. "I've made a decision. Tomorrow you will go back to

Buckkeep. There are people and animals waiting for you there. You're needed.

It's your home and your world. But it's not mine. Not anymore."

He was silent for a long moment. "And what will you do?"

I shook my head. "That's no longer your concern. Or anyone's, save mine."

"The girl?"

I shook my head again, more violently. "She's taken care of one cripple

already, and spent her youth doing so, only to find that he left her a debtor.

Shall I go back and seek her out, like this? Shall I ask her to love me so I can

be a burden to her like her father was? No. Alone or wed to another, she's

better off now as she is."

The silence stretched long between us. Jonqui was busy in, a corner of the

room, concocting yet another herbal draft that would do nothing for me. Burrich

stood over me, black and towering as a thundercloud. I knew how badly he wanted

to shake me, how he longed to cuff the stubbornness from me. But he did not.

Burrich did not hit cripples.

"So," he said at last. "That leaves only your king. Or do you forget you are

sworn as a King's Man?"

"I do not forget," I said quietly. "And did I believe myself a man still, I

would go back. But I am not, Burrich. I am a liability. On the game board, I

have become but one of those tokens that must be protected. A hostage for the

taking, powerless to defend myself or anyone else. No. The last act I can make

as a King's Man is to remove myself, before someone else does and injures my

king in the doing."

Burrich turned aside from me. He was a silhouette in the dim room, his face

unreadable by the firelight. "Tomorrow we will talk," he began.,

"Only to say farewell," I interrupted. "My heart is firm on this, Burrich."

I reached up to touch the earring in my ear.

"If you stay, then so must I." There was a fierceness in his low voice.

"That isn't how it works," I told him. "Once, my father told you to stay

behind, and raise a bastard for him. Now I tell you to leave, to go to serve a

King who still needs you."

"FitzChivalry, I don't-"

"Please." I don't know what he heard in my voice. Only that he was suddenly

still. "I am so tired. So damnably tired. The only thing I know is that I can't

live up to what everyone else thinks I should do. I just can't do it." My voice

quavered like an old man's. "No matter what I ought to do. No matter what I am

pledged to do. There isn't enough of me left to keep my word. Maybe that's not

right, but that's how it is. Everyone else's plans. Everyone else's goals. Never

mine. I tried, but ..." The room rocked around me as if someone else were

speaking, and I was shocked at what he was saying. But I couldn't deny the truth

of his words. "I need to be alone now. To rest," I said simply.

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Both of them just looked at me. Neither one of them spoke. They left the

room, slowly, as if hoping I would relent and call them back. I did not.

But after they had gone, and I was alone, I permitted myself to breathe out.

I felt dizzy with the decision I had made. I wasn't going back to Buckkeep. What

I was going to do, I had no idea. I had swept my broken bits of life from the

game table. Now there was room to set out anew what pieces I still had, to plot

a new strategy for living. Slowly, I realized I had no doubts. Regrets warred

with relief, but I had no doubts. Somehow it was much more bearable to move

forward into a life where no one would recall who I had once been. A life not

pledged to someone else's will. Not even my king's. It was done. I lay back in

my bed, and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed completely. Farewell, I

thought wearily. I would have liked to wish them all farewell, to stand one last

time before my king and see his brief nod that I had done well. Perhaps I could

have made him understand why I did not wish to go back. It was not to be. It

was, done now, all done. "I am sorry, my king," I muttered. I stared into the

dancing flames in the hearth until sleep claimed me.

CHAPTER ONE

Siltbay

To be King-in- Waiting, or the Queen-in- Waiting, is to firmly straddle the

fence between responsibility and authority. It is said the position was created

to satisfy the ambitions of an heir for power, while schooling him in the

exercising of it. The eldest child in the royal family assumes this position

upon the sixteenth birthday. From that day on, the King- or Queen-in-Waiting

assumes a full share of responsibility for the running of the Six Duchies.

Generally, he immediately assumes such duties as the ruling monarch cares least

for, and these have varied greatly from reign to reign.

Under King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry first became king-in-waiting. To him,

King Shrewd ceded over all that had to do with the borders and frontiers:

warfare, negotiations and diplomacy, the discomforts of extended travel and the

miserable conditions often encountered on the campaigns. When Chivalry abdicated

and Prince Verity became king-in-waiting, he inherited all the uncertainties of

the war with the Outislanders, and the civil unrest this situation created

between the Inland and Coastal Duchies. All of these tasks were rendered more

difficult in that, at any time, his decisions could be overridden by the King.

Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with

options not of his choosing.

Even less tenable, perhaps, was the position of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken.

Her Mountain ways marked her as a foreigner in the Six Duchies court. In

peaceful times, perhaps she would have been received with more tolerance. But

the court at Buckkeep seethed with the general unrest of the Six Duchies. The

Red-Ships from the Outislands harried our shoreline as they had not for

generations, destroying far more than they stole. The first winter of Kettricken

's reign as queen-in-waiting saw also the first winter raiding we had ever

experienced. The constant threat of raids, and the lingering torment of Forged

ones in our midst rocked the foundations of the Six Duchies. Confidence in the

monarchy was low, and Kettricken had the unenviable position of being an

unadmired king-in-waiting's outlandish queen.

Civil unrest divided the court as the Inland Duchies voiced their resentment

at taxes to protect a coastline they did not share. The Coastal Duchies cried

out for warships and soldiers and an effective way to battle the Raiders that

always struck where we were least prepared. Inland-bred Prince Regal sought to

gather power to himself by courting the Inland Dukes with gifts and social

attentions. King-in-Waiting Verity, convinced that his Skill was no longer

sufficient to hold the Raiders at bay, put his attentions to building warships

to guard the Coastal Duchies, with little time for his new queen. Over all, King

Shrewd crouched like a great spider, endeavoring to keep power spread among

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himself and his sons, to keep all in balance and the Six Duchies intact.

I awakened to someone touching my forehead. With an annoyed grunt, I turned

my head aside from the touch. My blankets were weltered around me; I fought my

way clear of their restraint and then sat up to see who had dared disturb me.

King Shrewd's fool perched anxiously on a chair beside my bed. I stared at him

wildly, and he drew back from my look. Uneasiness assailed me."

The Fool should have been back in Buckkeep, with the King, many miles and

days from here. I had never known him to leave the King's side for more than a

few hours or a night's rest. That he was here boded no good. The Fool was my

friend, as much as his strangeness allowed him to be friends with anyone. But a

visit from him always had a purpose, and such purposes were seldom trivial or

pleasant. He looked as weary as I had ever seen him. He wore an unfamiliar

motley of greens and reds and carried a fool's scepter with a rat's head on it.

The gay garments contrasted too strongly with his colorless skin. They made him

a translucent candle wreathed in holly. His clothing seemed more substantial

than he did. His fine pale hair floated from the confines of his cap like a

drowned man's hair in seawater, while the dancing flames of the fireplace shone

in his eyes. I rubbed my gritty eyes and pushed some of the hair back from my

face. My hair was damp; I'd been sweating in my sleep.

"Hello," I managed. "I didn't expect to see you here." My mouth felt dry, my

tongue thick and sour. I'd been sick, I recalled. The details seemed hazy.

"Where else?" He looked at me woefully. "For every hour you've slept, the

less rested you seem. Lie back, my lord. Let me make you comfortable." He

plucked at my pillows fussily, but I waved him away. Something was wrong here.

Never had he spoken me so fair. Friends we were, but the Fool's words to me were

always as pithy and sour as half-ripened fruit. If this sudden kindness was a

show of pity, I wanted none of it.

I glanced down at my embroidered nightshirt, at the rich bedcovers.

Something seemed odd about them. I was too tired and weak to puzzle it out.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.

He took a breath and sighed. "I am tending you. Watching over you while you

sleep. I know you think it foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then that

I must be foolish. Yet you ask me this same thing every time you awake. Let me

then propose something wiser. I beg you, my lord, let me send for another

healer."

I leaned back against my pillows. They were sweat damp, and smelled sour to

me. I knew I could ask the Fool to change them and he would. But I would just

sweat anew if he did. It was useless. I clutched at my covers with gnarled

fingers. I asked him bluntly, "Why have you come here?"

He took my hand in his and patted it. "My lord, I mistrust this sudden

weakness. You seem to take no good from this healer's ministrations. I fear that

his knowledge is much smaller than his opinion of it."

"Burrich?" I asked incredulously.

"Burrich? Would that he were here, my lord! He may be the stablemaster, but

for all that, I warrant he is more of a healer than this Wallace who doses and

sweats you."

"Wallace? Burrich is not here?"

The Fool's face grew graver. "No, my king. He remained in the Mountains, as

well you know."

"Your king," I said, and attempted to laugh. "Such mockery."

"Never, my lord," he said gently. "Never."

His tenderness confused me. This was not the Fool I knew, full of twisting

words and riddles, of sly jabs and puns and cunning insults. I felt suddenly

stretched thin as old rope, and as frayed. Still, I tried to piece things

together. "Then I am in Buckkeep?"

He nodded slowly. "Of course you are." Worry pinched his mouth.

I was silent, plumbing the full depth of my betrayal. Somehow I had been

returned to Buckkeep. Against my will. Burrich had not even seen fit to

accompany me.

"Let me get you some food," the Fool begged me. "You always feel better

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Robin Hobb - Assassin 3 - Royal Assassin

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