Robin Hobb - Assassin 2 - Assassin' s Quest

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Assassin's Quest
PROLOGUE
The Unremembered
I AWAKE EVERY MORNING with ink on my hands. Sometimes I am sprawled,
facedown, on my worktable, amidst a welter of scrolls and papers. My boy, when
he comes in with my tray, may dare to chide me for not taking myself off to bed
the night before. But sometimes he looks at my face and ventures no word. I do
not try to explain to him why I do as I do. It is not a secret one can give to a
younger man; it is one he must earn and learn on his own.
A man has to have a purpose in life. I know this now, but it took me the
first score years of my life to learn it. In that I scarcely think myself
unique. Still, it is a lesson that, once learned, has remained with me. So, with
little besides pain with which to occupy myself these days, I have sought out a
purpose for myself. I have turned to a task that both Lady Patience and Scribe
Fedwren had long ago advocated. I began these pages as an effort to write down a
coherent history of the Six Duchies. But I found it difficult to keep my mind
long fixed on a single topic, and so I distract myself with lesser treatises, on
my theories of magic, on my observations of political structures, and my
reflections on other cultures. When the discomfort is at its worst and I cannot
sort my own thoughts well enough to write them down, I work on translations, or
attempt to make a legible recording of older documents. I busy my hands in the
hope of distracting my mind.
My writing serves me as Verity's mapmaking once served him. The detail of
the work and the concentration required is almost enough to make one forget both
the longings of the addiction, and the residual pains of having once indulged
it. One can become lost in such work, and forget oneself. Or one can go even
deeper, and find many recollections of that self. All too often, I find I have
wandered far from a history of the duchies into a history of FitzChivalry. Those
recollections leave me face-to-face with who I once was, and who I have become.
When one is deeply absorbed in such a recounting, it is surprising how much
detail one can recall. Not all the memories I summon up are painful. I have had
more than a just share of good friends, and found them more loyal than I had any
right to expect. I have known beauties and joys that tried my heart's strength
as surely as the tragedies and uglinesses have. Yet I possess, perhaps, a
greater share of dark memories than most men; few men have known death in a
dungeon, or can recall the inside of a coffin buried beneath the snow. The mind
shies away from the details of such things. It is one thing to recall that Regal
killed me. It is another to focus on the details of the days and nights endured
as he starved me and then had me beaten to death. When I do, there are moments
that still can turn my bowels to ice, even after all these years. I can recall
the eyes of the man and the sound of his fist breaking my nose. There still
exists for me a place I visit in my dreams, where I fight to remain standing,
trying not to let myself think of how I will make a final effort to kill Regal.
I recall the blow from him that split my swollen skin and left the scar down my
face that I still bear.
I have never forgiven myself the triumph I ceded to him when I took poison
and died.
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But more painful than the events I can recall are those that are lost to me.
When Regal killed me, I died. I was never again commonly known as FitzChivalry,
I never renewed bonds to the Buckkeep folk who had known me since I was a child
of six. I never lived in Buckkeep Castle again, never more waited on the Lady
Patience, never sat on the hearthstones at Chade's feet again. Lost to me were
the rhythms of lives that had intertwined with mine. Friends died, others were
wed, babes were born, children came of age, and I saw none of it. Though I no
longer possess the body of a healthy young man, many still live who once called
me friend. Sometimes, still, I long to rest eyes on them, to touch hands, to lay
to peace the loneliness of years.
I cannot.
Those years are lost to me, and all the years of their lives to come. Lost,
too, is that period, no longer than a month, but seeming much longer, when I was
confined to dungeon and then coffin. My king had died in my arms, yet I did not
see him buried. Nor was I present at the council after my death when I was found
guilty of having used the Wit magic, and hence deserving of the death that had
been dealt me.
Patience came to lay claim to my body. My father's wife, once so distressed
to discover he had sired a bastard before they were wed, was the one who took me
from that cell. Hers the hands that washed my body for burial, that straightened
my limbs and wrapped me in a grave cloth. Awkward, eccentric Lady Patience, for
whatever reason, cleansed my wounds and bound them as carefully as if I still
lived. She alone ordered the digging of my grave and saw to the burying of my
coffin. She and Lacey, her woman, mourned me, when all others, out of fear or
disgust at my crime, abandoned me.
Yet she knew nothing of how Burrich and Chade, my assassin mentor, came
nights later to that grave, and dug away the snow that had fallen and the frozen
clumps of earth that had been tossed down on my coffin. Only those two were
present as Burrich broke through the lid of the coffin and tugged out my body,
and then summoned, by his own Wit magic, the wolf that had been entrusted with
my soul. They wrested that soul from the wolf and sealed it back into the
battered body it had fled. They raised me, to walk once more in a man's shape,
to recall what it was to have a king and be bound by an oath. To this day, I do
not know if I thank them for that. Perhaps, as the Fool insists, they had no
choice. Perhaps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only recognition of
the forces that brought us and bound us to our inevitable fates.
CHAPTER ONE
Gravebirth
IN THE CHALCED States, slaves are kept. They supply the drudge labor. They
are the miners, the bellows workers, the galley rowers, the crews for the offal
wagons, the field-workers, and the whores. Oddly, slaves are also the nursemaids
and children's tutors and cooks and scribers and skilled craftsfolk. All of
Chalced's gleaming civilization, from the great libraries of Jep to the fabled
fountains and baths at Sinjon's, is founded on the existence of a slave class.
The Bingtown Traders are the major source of the slave supply. At one time,
most slaves were captives taken in war, and Chalced still officially claims this
is true. In more recent years there have not been sufficient wars to keep up
with the demand for educated slaves. The Bingtown Traders are very resourceful
in finding other sources, and the rampant piracy in the Trade Islands is often
mentioned in association with this. Those who are slave owners in Chalced show
little curiosity about where the slaves come from, so long as they are healthy.
Slavery is a custom that has never taken root in the Six Duchies. A man
convicted of a crime may be required to serve the one he has injured, but a
limit of time is always placed, and he is never seen as less than a man making
atonement. If a crime is too heinous to be redeemed by labor, then the criminal
pays with his death. No one ever becomes a slave in the Six Duchies, nor do our
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laws support the idea that a household may bring slaves into the kingdom and
have them remain so. For this reason, many Chalced slaves who do win free of
their owners by one path or another often seek the Six Duchies as a new home.
These slaves bring with them the far-flung traditions and folklore of their
own lands. One such tale I have preserved has to do with a girl who was Vecci,
or what we would call Witted. She wished to leave her parents' home, to follow a
man she loved and be his wife. Her parents did not find him worthy and denied
her permission. When they would not let her go, she was too dutiful a child to
disobey them. But she was also too ardent a woman to live without her true love.
She lay down on her bed and died of sorrow. Her parents buried her with great
mourning and much self reproach that they had not allowed her to follow her
heart. But unbeknownst to them, she was Wit-bonded to a she-bear. And when the
girl died, the she-bear took her spirit into her keeping, so it might not be
free of the world. Three nights after the girl had been buried, the she bear dug
up the grave, and restored the girl's spirit to her body. The girl's gravebirth
made her a new person, no longer owing duty to her parents. So she left the
shattered coffin and went seeking her one true love. The tale has a sad ending,
for having been a she-bear for a time, she was never wholly human again, and her
true love would not have her.
This scrap of a tale was the basis for Burrich's decision to try to free me
from Prince Regal's dungeon by poisoning me.
The room was too hot. And too small. Panting no longer cooled me. I got up
from the table and went to the water barrel in the corner. I took the cover off
it and drank deeply. Heart of the Pack looked up with an almost-snarl. "Use a
cup, Fitz."
Water ran from my chin. I looked up at him steadily, watching him.
"Wipe your face." Heart of the Pack looked away from me, back to his own
hands. He had grease on them and was rubbing it into some straps. I snuffed it.
I licked my lips.
"I am hungry," I told him.
"Sit down and finish your work. Then we will eat."
I tried to remember what he wanted of me. He moved his hand toward the table
and I recalled. More leather straps at my end of the table. I went back and sat
in the hard chair.
"I am hungry now," I explained to him. He looked at me again in the way that
did not show his teeth but was still a snarl. Heart of the Pack could snarl with
his eyes. I sighed. The grease he was using smelled very good. I swallowed. Then
I looked down. Leather straps and bits of metal were on the table before me. I
looked at them for a while. After a time, Heart of the Pack set down his straps
and wiped his hands on a cloth. He came to stand beside me, and I had to turn to
be able to see him. "Here," he said, touching the leather before me. "You were
mending it here." He stood over me until I picked it up again. I bent to sniff
it and he struck my shoulder. "Don't do that!"
My lip twitched, but I did not snarl. Snarling at him made him very, very
angry. For a time I held the straps. Then it seemed as if my hands remembered
before my mind did. I watched my fingers work the leather. When it was done, I
held it up before him and tugged it, hard, to show that it would hold even if
the horse threw its head back. "But there isn't a horse," I remembered out loud.
"All the horses are gone."
Brother?
I come. I rose from my chair. I went to the door.
"Come back and sit down," Heart of the Pack said.
Nighteyes waits, I told him. Then I remembered he could not hear me. I
thought he could if he would try, but be would not try. I knew that if I spoke
to him that way again, he would push me. He would not let me speak to Nighteyes
that way much. He would even push Nighteyes if the wolf spoke too much to me. It
seemed a very strange thing. "Nighteyes waits," I told him with my mouth.
"I know."
"It is a good time to hunt, now."
"It is a better time for you to stay in. I have food here for you."
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"Nighteyes and I could find fresh meat." My mouth ran at the thought of it.
A rabbit torn open, still steaming in the winter night. That was what I wanted.
"Nighteyes will have to hunt alone this night," Heart of the Pack told me.
He went to the window and opened the shutters a little. The chill air rushed in.
I could smell Nighteyes and, farther away, a snowcat. Nighteyes whined. "Go
away," Heart of the Pack told him. "Go on, now, go hunt, go feed yourself. I've
not enough to feed you here."
Nighteyes went away from the light that spilled from the window. But he did
not go too far. He was waiting out there for me, but I knew he could not wait
long. Like me, he was hungry now.
Heart of the Pack went to the fire that made the room too hot.. There was a
pot by it, and he poked it away from the fire and took the lid off. Steam came
out, and with it smells. Grain and roots, and a tiny bit of meat smell, almost
boiled away. But I was so hungry I snuffed after it. I started to whine, but
Heart of the Pack made the eye-snarl again. So I went back to the hard chair. I
sat. I waited.
He took a very long time. He took all the leather from the table and put it
on a hook. Then he put the pot of grease away. Then he brought the hot pot to
the table. Then he set out two bowls and two cups. He put water in the cups. He
set out a knife and two spoons. From the cupboard he brought bread and a small
pot of jam. He put the stew in the bowl before me, but I knew I could not touch
it. I had to sit and not eat the food while he cut the bread and gave me a
piece. I could hold the bread, but I could not eat it until he sat down too,
with his plate and his stew and his bread.
"Pick up your spoon," he reminded me. Then he slowly sat down in his chair
right beside me. I was holding the spoon and the bread and waiting, waiting,
waiting. I didn't take, my eyes off him but I could not keep my mouth from
moving. It made him angry. I shut my mouth again. Finally he said, "We will eat
now."
But the waiting still had not stopped. One bite I was allowed to take. It
must be chewed and swallowed before I took more, or he would cuff me. I could
take only as much stew as would fit on the spoon. I picked up the cup and drank
from it. He smiled at me. "Good, Fitz. Good boy."
I smiled back, but then I took too large a bite of the bread and he frowned
at me. I tried to chew it slowly, but I was so hungry now, and the food was
here, and I did not understand why he would not just let me eat it now. It took
a long time to eat. He had made the stew too hot on purpose, so that I would
burn my mouth if I took too big a bite. I thought about that for a bit. Then I
said, "You made the food too hot on purpose. So I will be burned if I eat too
fast."
His smile came more slowly. He nodded at me.
I still finished eating before he did. I had to sit on the chair until he
had finished eating, too.
"Well, Fitz," he said at last. "Not too bad a day today. Hey, boy?"
I looked at him.
"Say something back to me," he told me.
"What?" I asked.
"Anything."
"Anything."
He frowned at me and I wanted to snarl, because I had done what he told me.
After a time, he got up and got a bottle. He poured something into his cup. He
held the bottle out to me. "Do you want some?"
I pulled back from it. Even the smell of it stung in my nostrils.
"Answer," he reminded me.
"No. No, it's bad water."
"No. It's bad brandy. Blackberry brandy, very cheap. I used to hate it, you
used to like it."
I snorted out the smell. "We have never liked it."
He set the bottle and the cup down on the table. He got up and went to the
window. He opened it again. "Go hunting, I said!" I felt Nighteyes jump and then
run away. Nighteyes is as afraid of Heart of the Pack as I am. Once I attacked
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Heart of the Pack. I had been sick for a long time, but then I was better. I
wished to go out to hunt and he would not let me. He stood before the door and I
sprang on him. He hit me with his fist, and then held me down. He is not bigger
than I. But he is meaner, and more clever. He knows many ways to hold and most
of them hurt. He held me on the floor, on my back, with my throat bared and
waiting for his teeth, for a long, long time. Every time I moved, he cuffed me.
Nighteyes had snarled outside the house, but not very close to the door, and he
had not tried to come in. When I whined for mercy, he struck me again. "Be
quiet!" he said. When I was quiet, he told me, "You are younger. I am older and
I know more. I fight better than you do, I hunt better than you do. I am always
above you. You will do everything I want you to do. You will do everything I
tell you to do. Do you understand that?"
Yes, I had told him. Yes, yes, that is pack, I understand, I understand. But
he had only struck me again and held me there, throat wide, until I told him
with my mouth, "Yes, I understand."
When Heart of the Pack came back to the table, he put brandy in my cup. He
set it in front of me, where I would have to smell it. I snorted.
"Try it," he urged me. "Just a little. You used to like it. You used to
drink it in town, when you were younger and not supposed to go into taverns
without me. And then you would chew mint, and think I would not know what you
had done."
I shook my head at him. "I would not do what you told me not to do. I
understood."
He made his sound that is like choking and sneezing. "Oh, you used to very
often do what I had told you not to do. Very often. "
I shook my head again. "I do not remember it."
"Not yet. But you will." He pointed at the brandy again. "Go on. Taste it.
Just a little bit. It might do you good."
And because he had told me I must, I tasted it. It stung my mouth and nose,
and I could not snort the taste away. I spilled what was left in the cup.
"Well. Wouldn't Patience be pleased" was all he said. And then he made me
get a cloth and clean what I had spilled. And clean the dishes in water and wipe
them dry, too.
Sometimes I would shake and fall down. There was no reason. Heart of the
Pack would try to hold me still. Sometimes the shaking made me fall asleep. When
I awakened later, I ached. My chest hurt, my back hurt. Sometimes I bit my
tongue. I did not like those times. They frightened Nighteyes.
And sometimes there was another with Nighteyes and me, another who thought
with us. He was very small, but he was there. I did not want him there. I did
not want anyone there, ever again, except Nighteyes and me. He knew that, and
made himself so small that most of the time he was not there.
Later, a man came.
"A man is coming," I told Heart of the Pack. It was dark and the fire was
burning low. The good hunting time was past. Full dark was here. Soon he would
make us sleep.
He did not answer me. He got up quickly and quietly and took up the big
knife that was always on the table. He pointed at me to go to the corner, out of
his way. He went softly to the door and waited. Outside, I heard the man
stepping through the snow. Then I smelled him. "It is the gray one," I told him.
"Chade."
He opened the door very quickly then, and the gray one came in. I sneezed
with the scents he brought on him. Powders of dry leaves are what he always
smelled like, and smokes of different kinds. He was thin and old, but Heart of
the Pack always behaved as if he were pack higher. Heart of the Pack put more
wood on the fire. The room got brighter, and hotter. The gray one pushed back
his hood. He looked at me for a time with his light-colored eyes, as if he were
waiting. Then he spoke to Heart of the Pack.
"How is he? Any better?"
Heart of the Pack moved his shoulders. "When he smelled you, he said your
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name. Hasn't had a seizure in a week. Three days ago, he mended a bit of harness
for me. And did a good job, too."
"He doesn't try to chew on the leather anymore?"
"No. At least, not while I'm watching him. Besides, it's work he knows very
well. It may touch something in him." Heart of the Pack gave a short laugh. "If
nothing else, mended harness is a thing that can be sold."
The gray one went and stood by the fire and held his hands out to it. There
were spots on his hands. Heart of the Pack got out his brandy bottle. They had
brandy in cups. He made me hold a cup with a little brandy in. the bottom of it,
but he did not make me taste it. They talked long, long, long, of things that
had nothing to do with eating or sleeping or hunting. The gray one had heard
something about a woman. It might be crucial, a rallying point for the duchies.
Heart of the Pack said, "I won't talk about it in front of Fitz. I promised."
The gray one asked him if he thought I understood, and Heart of the Pack said
that that didn't matter, he had given his word. I wanted to go to sleep, but
they made me sit still in a chair. When the old one had to leave, Heart of the
Pack said, "It is very dangerous for you to come here. So far a walk for you.
Will you be able to get back in?"
The gray one just smiled. "I have my ways, Burrich," he said. I smiled too,
remembering that he had always been proud of his secrets.
One day, Heart of the Pack went out and left me alone. He did not tie me. He
just said, "There are some oats here. If you want to eat while I'm gone, you'll
have to remember how to cook them. If you go out of the door or the window, if
you even open the door or the window, I will know it. And I will beat you to
death. Do you understand that?"
"I do," I said. He seemed very angry at me, but I could not remember doing
anything he had told me not to do. He opened a box and took things from it. Most
were round metal. Coins. One thing I remembered. It was shiny and curved like a
moon, and had smelled of blood when I first got it. I had fought another for it.
I could not remember that I had wanted it, but I had fought and won it. I did
not want it now. He held it up on its chain to look at it, then put it in a
pouch. I did not care that he took it away.
I was very, very hungry before he came back. When he did there was a smell
on him. A female's smell. Not strong, and mixed with the smells of a meadow. But
it was a good smell that made me want something, something that was not food or
water or hunting. I came close to him to smell it, but he did not notice that.
He cooked the porridge and we ate. Then he just sat before the fire, looking
very, very sad. I got up and got the brandy bottle. I brought it to him with a
cup. He took them from me but he did not smile. "Maybe tomorrow I shall teach
you to fetch," he told me. "Maybe that's something you could master." Then he
drank all the brandy that was in the bottle, and opened another bottle after
that. I sat and watched him. After he fell asleep, I took his coat that had the
smell on it. I put it on the floor and lay on it, smelling it until I fell
asleep.
I dreamed, but it made no sense. There had been a female who smelled like
Burrich's coat, and I had not wanted her to go. She was my female, but when she
left, I did not follow. That was all I could remember. Remembering it was not
good, in the same way that being hungry or thirsty was not good.
He was making me stay in. He had made me stay in for a long, long time, when
all I wanted to do was go out. But that time it was raining, very hard, so hard
the snow was almost all melted. Suddenly it seemed good not to go out.
"Burrich," I said, and he looked up very suddenly at me. I thought he was going
to attack, he moved so quickly. I tried not to cower. Cowering made him angry
sometimes.
"What is it, Fitz?" he asked, and his voice was kind.
"I am hungry," I said. "Now."
He gave me a big piece of meat. It was cooked, but it was a big piece. I ate
it too fast and he watched me, but he did not tell me not to, or cuff me. That
time.
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I kept scratching at my face. At my beard. Finally, I went and stood in
front of Burrich. I scratched at it in front of him. "I don't like this," I told
him. He looked surprised. But he gave me very hot water and soap, and a very
sharp knife. He gave me a round glass with a man in it. I looked at it for a
long time. It made me shiver. His eyes were like Burrich's, with white around
them, but even darker. Not wolf eyes. His coat was dark like Burrich's, but the
hair on his jaws was uneven and rough. I touched my beard, and saw fingers on
the man's face. It was strange.
"Shave, but be careful," Burrich told me.
I could almost remember how. The smell of the soap, the hot water on my
face. But the sharp, sharp blade kept cutting me. Little cuts that stung. I
looked at the man in the round glass afterward. Fitz, I thought. Almost like
Fitz. I was bleeding. "I'm bleeding everywhere," I told Burrich.
He laughed at me. "You always bleed after you shave. You always try to hurry
too much." He took the sharp, sharp blade. "Sit still," he told me. "You've
missed some spots."
I sat very still and he did not cut me. It was hard to be still when he came
so near to me and looked at me so closely. When he was done, he took my chin in
his hand. He tipped my face up and looked at me. He looked at me hard. "Fitz?"
he said. He turned his head and smiled at me, but then the smile faded when I
just looked at him. He gave me a brush.
"There is no horse to brush," I told him.
He looked almost pleased. "Brush this," he told me, and roughed up my hair.
He made me brush it until it would lie flat. There were sore places on my head.
Burrich frowned when he saw me wince. He took the brush away and made me stand
still while he looked and touched beneath my hair. "Bastard!" he said harshly,
and when I cowered, he said, "Not you." He shook his head slowly. He patted me
on the shoulder. "The pain will go away with time," he told me. He showed me how
to pull my hair back and tie it with leather. It was just long enough. "That's
better," he said. "You look like a man again."
I woke up from a dream, twitching and yelping. I sat up and started to cry.
He came to me from his bed. "What's wrong, Fitz? Are you all right?"
"He took me from my mother!" I said. "He took me away from her. I was much
too young to be gone from her."
"I know," he said, "I know. But it was a long time ago. You're here now, and
safe." He looked almost frightened.
"He smoked the den," I told him. "He made my mother and brothers into
hides."
His face changed and his voice was no longer kind. "No, Fitz. That was not
your mother. That was a wolf's dream. Nighteyes. It might have happened to
Nighteyes. But not you."
"Oh, yes, it did," I told him, and I was suddenly angry. "Oh, yes it did,
and it felt just the same. Just the same." I got up from my bed and walked
around the room. I walked for a very long time, until I could stop feeling that
feeling again. He sat and watched me. He drank a lot of brandy while I walked.
One day in spring I stood looking out of the window. The world smelled good,
alive and new. I stretched and rolled my shoulders. I heard my bones crackle
together. "It would be a good morning to go out riding," I said. I turned to
look at Burrich. He was stirring porridge in a kettle over the fire. He came and
stood beside me.
"It's still winter up in the Mountains," he said softly. "I wonder if
Kettricken got home safely."
"If she didn't, it wasn't Sooty's fault," I said. Then something turned over
and hurt inside me, so that for a moment I couldn't catch my breath. I tried to
think of what it was, but it ran away from me. I didn't want to catch up with
it, but I knew it was a thing I should hunt. It would be like hunting a bear.
When I got up close to it, it would turn on me and try to hurt me. But something
about it made me want to follow anyway. I took a deep breath and shuddered it
out. I drew in another, with a sound that caught in my throat.
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Beside me, Burrich was very still and silent. Waiting for me.
Brother, you are a wolf Come back, come away from that, it will hurt you,
Nighteyes warned me.
I leaped back from it.
Then Burrich went stamping about the room, cursing things, and letting the
porridge burn. We had to eat it anyway, there was nothing else.
For a time, Burrich bothered me. "Do you remember?" he was always saying. He
wouldn't leave me alone. He would tell me names, and make me try to say who they
were. Sometimes I would know, a little. "A woman," I told him when he said
Patience. "A woman in a room with plants." I had tried, but he still got angry
with me.
If I slept at night, I had dreams. Dreams of a trembling light, a dancing
light on a stone wall. And eyes at a small window. The dreams would hold me down
and keep me from breathing. If I could get enough breath to scream, I could wake
up. Sometimes it took a long time to get enough breath. Burrich would wake up,
too, and grab the big knife off the table. "What is it, what is it?" he would
ask me. But I could not tell him.
It was safer to sleep in the daylight, outside, smelling grass and earth.
The dreams of stone walls did not come then. Instead, a woman came, to press
herself sweetly against me. Her scent was the same as the meadow flowers', and
her mouth tasted of honey. The pain of those dreams came when I awoke, and knew
she was gone forever, taken by another. At night I sat and looked at the fire. I
tried not to think of cold stone walls, nor of dark eyes weeping and a sweet
mouth gone heavy with bitter words. I did not sleep. I dared not even lie down.
Burrich did not make me.
Chade came back one day. He had grown his beard long and he wore a
wide-brimmed hat like a peddler, but I knew him all the same. Burrich wasn't at
home when he arrived, but I let him in. I did not know why he had come. "Do you
want some brandy?" I asked, thinking perhaps that was why he had come. He looked
closely at me and almost smiled.
"Fitz?" he said. He turned his head sideways to look into my face. "So. How
have you been?"
I didn't know the answer to that question, so I just looked at him. After a
time, he put the kettle on. He took things out of his pack. He had brought spice
tea, some cheese and smoked fish. He took out packets of herbs as well and set
them out in a row on the table. Then he took out a leather pouch. Inside it was
a fat yellow crystal, large enough to fill his hand. In the bottom of the pack
was a large shallow bowl, glazed blue inside. He had set it on the table and
filled it with clean water when Burrich returned. Burrich had gone fishing. He
had a string with six small fish on it. They were creek fish, not ocean fish.
They were slippery and shiny. He had already taken all the guts out.
"You leave him alone now?" Chade asked Burrich after they had greeted one
another.
"I have to, to get food."
"So you trust him now?"
Burrich looked aside from Chade. "I've trained a lot of animals. Teaching
one to do what you tell it is not the same as trusting a man."
Burrich cooked the fish in a pan and then we ate. We had the cheese and the
tea also. Then, while I was cleaning the pans and dishes, they sat down to talk.
"I want to try the herbs," Chade said to Burrich. "Or the water, or the
crystal. Something. Anything. I begin to think that he's not really ... in
there."
"He is," Burrich asserted quietly. "Give him time. I don't think the herbs
are a good idea for him. Before he ... changed, he was getting too fond of
herbs. Toward the end, he was always either ill, or charged full of energy. If
he was not in the depths of sorrow, he was exhausted from fighting or from being
King's Man to Verity or Shrewd. Then he'd be into the elfbark instead of
resting. He'd forgotten how to just rest and let his body recover. He'd never
wait for it. That last night ... you gave him carris seed, didn't you? Foxglove
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said she'd never seen anything like it. I think more folk might have come to his
aid, if they hadn't been so frightened of him. Poor old Blade thought he had
gone stark raving mad. He never forgave himself for taking him down. I wish he
could know the boy hadn't actually died."
"There was no time to pick and choose. I gave him what I had to hand. I
didn't know he'd go mad on carris seed."
"You could have refused him," Burrich said quietly.
"It wouldn't have stopped him. He'd have gone as he was, exhausted, and been
killed right there."
I went and sat down on the hearth. Burrich was not watching me. I lay down,
then rolled over on my back and stretched. It felt good. I closed my eyes and
felt the warmth of the fire on my flank.
"Get up and sit on the stool, Fitz," Burrich said.
I sighed, but I obeyed. Chade did not look at me. Burrich resumed talking.
"I'd like to keep him on an even keel. I think he just needs time, to do it
on his own. He remembers. Sometimes. And then he fights it off. I don't think he
wants to remember, Chade. I don't think he really wants to go back to being
FitzChivalry. Maybe he liked being a wolf. Maybe he liked it so much he's never
coming back."
"He has to come back," Chade said quietly. "We need him."
Burrich sat up. He'd had his feet up on the woodpile, but now he set them on
the floor. He leaned toward Chade. "You've had word?"
"Not I. But Patience has, I think. It's very frustrating, sometimes, to be
the rat behind the wall."
"So what did you hear?"
"Only Patience and Lacey, talking about wool."
"Why is that important?"
"They wanted wool to weave a very soft cloth. For a baby, or a small child.
`It will be born at the end of our harvest, but that's the beginning of winter
in the Mountains. So let us make it thick,' Patience said. Perhaps for
Kettricken's child."
Burrich looked startled. "Patience knows about Kettricken?"
Chade laughed. "I don't know. Who knows what that woman knows? She has
changed much of late. She gathers the Buckkeep Guard into the palm of her hand,
and Lord Bright does not even see it happening. I think now that we should have
let her know our plan, included her from the beginning. But perhaps not"
"It might have been easier for me if we had." Burrich stared deep into the
fire.
Chade shook his head. "I am sorry. She had to believe you had abandoned
Fitz, rejected him for his use of the Wit. If you had gone after his body, Regal
might have been suspicious. We had to make Regal believe she was the only one
who cared enough to bury him."
"She hates me now. She told me I had no loyalty, nor courage." Burrich
looked at his hands and his voice tightened. "I knew she had stopped loving me
years ago. When she gave her heart to Chivalry. I could accept that. He was a
man worthy of her. And I had walked away from her first. So I could live with
her not loving me, because I felt she still respected me as a man. But now, she
despises me. I ..." He shook his head, then closed his eyes tightly. For a
moment all was still. Then Burrich straightened himself slowly and turned to
Chade. His voice was calm as he asked, "So, you think Patience knows that
Kettricken fled to the Mountains?"
"It wouldn't surprise me. There has been no official word, of course. Regal
has sent messages to King Eyod, demanding to know if Kettricken fled there, but
Eyod replied only that she was the Six Duchies Queen and what she did was not a
Mountain concern. Regal was angered enough by that to cut off trade to the
Mountains. But Patience seems to know much of what goes on outside the keep.
Perhaps she knows what is happening in the Mountain Kingdom. For my part, I
should dearly love to know how she intends to send the blanket to the Mountains.
It's a long and weary way."
For a long time, Burrich was silent. Then he said, "I should have found a
way to go with Kettricken and the Fool. But there were only the two horses, and
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only supplies enough for two. I hadn't been able to get more than that. And so
they went alone." He glared into the fire, then asked, "I don't suppose anyone
has heard anything of King-in-Waiting Verity?"
Chade shook his head slowly. "King Verity," he reminded Burrich softly. "If
he were here." He looked far away. "If he were coming back, I think he'd be here
by now," he said quietly. "A few more soft days like this, and there will be
Red-Ship Raiders in every bay. I no longer believe Verity is coming back."
"Then Regal truly is King," Burrich said sourly. "At least until
Kettricken's child is born and comes of age. And then we can look forward to a
civil war if the child tries to claim the crown. If there is still a Six Duchies
left to be ruled. Verity. I wish now that he had not gone questing for the
Elderlings. At least while he was alive, we had some protection from the
Raiders. Now, with Verity gone and spring getting stronger, nothing stands
between us and the Red-Ships ...."
Verity. I shivered with the cold. I pushed the cold away. It came back and I
pushed it all away. I held it away. After a moment, I took a deep breath.
"Just the water, then?" Chade asked Burrich, and I knew they had been
talking but I had not been hearing.
Burrich shrugged. "Go ahead. What can it hurt? Did he use to scry things in
water?"
"I never tried him. I always suspected he could if he tried. He has the Wit
and the Skill. Why shouldn't he be able to scry as well?"
"Just because a man can do a thing does not mean he should do a thing."
For a time, they looked at one another. Then Chade shrugged. "Perhaps my
trade does not allow me so many niceties of conscience as yours," he suggested
in a stiff voice.
After a moment, Burrich said gruffly, "Your pardon, sir. We all served our
king as our abilities dictated."
Chade nodded to that. Then he smiled.
Chade cleared the table of everything but the dish of water and some
candles. "Come here," he said to me softly, so I went back to the table. He sat
me in his chair and put the dish in front of me. "Look in the water," he told
me. "Tell me what you see."
I saw the water in the bowl. I saw the blue in the bottom of the bowl.
Neither answer made him happy. He kept telling me to look again but I kept
seeing the same things. He moved the candle several times, each time telling me
to look again. Finally he said to Burrich, "Well, at least he answers when you
speak to him now."
Burrich nodded, but he looked discouraged. "Yes. Perhaps with time," he
said.
I knew they were finished with me then, and I relaxed.
Chade asked if he could stay the night with us. Burrich said of course. Then
he went and fetched the brandy. He poured two cups. Chade drew my stool to the
table and sat again. I sat and waited, but they began talking to one another
again.
"What about me?" I asked at last.
They stopped talking and looked at me. "What about you?" Burrich asked.
"Don't I get any brandy?"
They looked at me. Burrich asked carefully, "Do you want some? I didn't
think you liked it."
"No, I don't like it. I never liked it." I thought for a moment. "But it was
cheap."
Burrich stared at me. Chade smiled a small smile, looking down at his hands.
Then Burrich got another cup and poured some for me. For a time they sat
watching me, but I didn't do anything. Eventually they began talking again. I
took a sip of the brandy. It still stung my mouth and nose, but it made a warmth
inside me. I knew I didn't want any more. Then I thought I did. I drank some
more. It was just as unpleasant. Like something Patience would force on me for a
cough. No. I pushed that memory aside as well. I set the cup down.
Burrich did not look at me. He went on talking to Chade. "When you hunt a
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