Royal Assassin (Farseer Trilogy, #2)

by Robin Hobb

After all, winning was getting what you wanted, wasn’t it?

My father is dead. Justin and Serene. I should have guessed somehow. His weariness and dwindling strength; those are the hallmarks of a King’s Man, drained too low too often. I suspect it had been going on long, probably since before Galen … died.

Rosemary. Sweet, sleepy child, always nodding off in a corner. So bright one could trust her with any errand. So young one forgot she was even there. Yet I should have known. I was no older when Chade had first begun to teach me my trade. I felt ill, and it must have shown on my face. I could not recall what I had or had not said in front of her. I had no way of knowing what secrets Kettricken had confided over that little, dark, curly head.

Even the Stablemaster sought to say her nay, telling her, ‘Lady Princess, the stallion should be put down in blood and fire, for he was trained by Sly o’the Wit, and only to him is he true!’ Then the Wilful Princess grew wroth and said, ‘Are these not my stables and my horses, and may I not choose which of my beasts I shall ride?’ Then all grew silent before her temper, and she ordered the Piebald Stallion saddled for the hunt.

At last she stopped by a stream to sip the cool water, but lo, when she turned, the Piebald Stallion was gone, and in his place stood Sly o’the Wit, as mottled as his Wit-beast. Then he was with her as a stallion is with a mare, so that ere the year had turned, she went heavy with child. And when those who attended her birth saw the babe, all mottled on the face and shoulders, they cried aloud with fear. When the Wilful Princess saw him, she screamed, and gave up her spirit in blood and shame, that she had borne Sly’s Wit-child. So the Piebald Prince was born in fear and shame, and that was what he brought into the world with him.

My brother? I reached for Nighteyes. I am here. I am always here.

I wish you were here. I’ve a porcupine quill in my lip. I can’t paw it loose. It hurts. And how did you get that? In the midst of all else, I still had to smile. He knew better but had not been able to resist the fat, waddling creature.

Heart of the Pack would get it out for you, if you asked him nicely. You can trust him. He pushed me when I spoke to him. But then he spoke to me. Did he? A slow working through of thought. That night. When I guided them to him. He said to me, Bring them here to me, not to the dog-fox place. Picture me the place you went.

He came like a shadow down the hall. Silently. Not furtive. He was so unobtrusive, he did not need to worry about being furtive. This was Skill as I had never seen it used before. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck hackle when Will stopped outside the door and looked in at me. He did not speak and I dared not. Even looking at him was giving him too much of an opening to myself. Yet I feared to look away. The Skill shimmered around him like an aura of awareness.

Where had he been? What had been so important to Regal that he had set Will upon it rather than using him to secure the crown? White ship.

Then he leaned back and spat full in my face. ‘That, for you,’ he snarled. ‘That for my life, which you took from me. All the hours, all the days I spent upon you. Better that you had lain down and died amongst the beasts before you let this come to pass. They’re going to hang you, boy.

He shook his head at me, his face contorting with grief and anger. ‘Lie down and die, boy. Just lie down and die.’

Then I wrapped myself in Brawndy’s cloak and slowly lay myself down on the bench. I knew I should keep vigil, lest Will come back. I was too hopeless and too weary. I am with you, Nighteyes. We sped away together, over crusted white snow, into a wolf world.

You must come with me. Nighteyes, I am already with you. No. You must come with me, all the way. You must let go.

That’s right, that’s right. Just leave it. Now. Let go of it. Just let go. I knew abruptly what he wanted me to do. I did not know quite how to do it, and I was not sure that I could. Once, yes, I remembered that I had let go of my body and left it in his care.

Changer. Changer! My brother! Changer.

Changer, he had called me. My own wolf, calling me that, just as the Fool or Chade called me a catalyst.

But there was still that thread, that tiny awareness of a stiff and aching body on a cold stone floor.

Suddenly, it was all so easy. Such an easy choice. Leave that body for this one. It didn’t work very well any more anyway. Stuck in a cage. No point to keeping it. No point to being a man at all. I’m here. I know. Let us hunt. And we did.

The exercise for centring oneself is a simple one. Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. Then, in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself.

Time is no miser when one lives always in the now.

Come. We pause. No, the meat is waiting. We trot on. Come now. Come to me. I’ve meat for you. We’ve meat already. And closer. Nighteyes. Changer. Heart of the Pack summons you.

Let him go, Nighteyes. He is not yours. A hint of teeth in those words, his eyes stare at us too hard. He is not yours, either, Nighteyes says. Whose am I, then? A moment of teetering, of balancing between two worlds, two realities, two fleshes.

And every time I closed my eyes, Burrich would seize me and shake me like a rag. ‘Stay with me, Fitz,’ he kept saying. ‘Stay with me, stay with me. Come on, boy. You’re not dead. You’re not dead.’ Then suddenly he hugged me to him, his bearded face bristling against mine and his hot tears falling on my face. He rocked me back and forth, sitting in the snow at the edge of my grave. ‘You’re not dead, son. You’re not dead.’

It was a thing Burrich had heard of, in a tale told by his grandmother. A tale of a Witted one who could leave her body, for a day or so, and then come back to it. And Burrich had told it to Chade, and Chade had mixed the poisons that would take me to the brink of death. They told me I had not died, that my body had but slowed to an appearance of death.

Patience had begged that my body not be burned, but be buried whole. The Lady Grace had also sent word on my behalf, much to her husband’s disgust. Only those two stood by me, in the face of Regal’s proof of my Wit taint.

Yet even now, when the pain presses most heavily and none of the herbs can turn its deep ache, when I consider the body that entraps my spirit, I recall my days as a wolf, and know them not as a few but as a season of living. There is a comfort in their recalling, as well as a temptation. Come, hunt with me, the invitation whispers in my heart. Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own. Wolves have no kings.