Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

‘What have they done to me, Fitz? Gods, what have they done to you, to mark you so? What has become of me, that I did not even know you though I carried you in my arms?’ His cool fingers moved tentatively down my face, tracing the scar and the broken nose. He leaned down suddenly to rest his brow against mine. ‘When I recall how beautiful you were,’ he whispered brokenly, and then fell silent. The warm drip of his tear against my face felt scalding.

‘You were never really good at it, you know. There was a naiveté to you that none of the ugliness could stain, as if you never truly believed in evil. It was what I liked best about you.’ The Fool swayed slightly where he sat, but righted himself. ‘It was what I missed most, when you were dead.’ I smiled foolishly. ‘A while back, I thought it was my great beauty.’ For a time the Fool just looked at me. Then he glanced aside and spoke quietly. ‘Unfair. Were I myself, I would never have spoken such words aloud. Still. Ah, Fitz.’ He looked at me and shook his head fondly. He spoke without mockery, making almost a stranger of himself. ‘Perhaps half of it was that you were so unaware of it. Not like Regal. Now there’s a pretty man, but he knows it too well. You never see him with his hair tousled or the red of the wind on his cheeks.’

He laid one long cool hand along my cheek and then gentled the hair back from my eyes. ‘Tomorrow,’ he told me gravely. ‘We shall be ourselves again. The Fool and the Bastard. Or the White Prophet and the Catalyst, if you will. We will have to take up those lives, as little as we care for them, and fulfil all fate has decreed for us. But for here, for now, just between us two, and for no other reason save I am me and you are you, I tell you this. I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.’ He leaned forward then and for an instant pressed his brow to mine. Then he breathed a heavy sigh and drew back from me. ‘Go to sleep, boy,’ he said in a fair imitation of Chade’s voice. ‘Tomorrow comes early. And we’ve work to do.’ He laughed unevenly. ‘We’ve the world to save, you and I.’

Diplomacy may very well be the art of manipulating secrets. What would any negotiation come to, were not there secrets to either share or withhold? And this is as true of a marriage pact as it is of a trade agreement between kingdoms.

King Shrewd was fond of saying that there was no greater advantage than to know your enemy’s secret when he believed you ignorant of it. Perhaps that is the most powerful secret of all to possess.

All the next day, as we followed the road down the mountain’s flank, I held the stone in my bare hand. My other arm was about the Fool’s waist, his arm around my neck. These two things kept my mind focused.

Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.’

But they were a comfortable distance behind us when I quietly asked the Fool, ‘Why do you allow Starling to believe you are a woman?’ He turned to me, waggled his eyebrows and blew me a kiss. ‘And am I not, fair princeling?’ ‘I’m serious,’ I rebuked him. ‘She thinks you are a woman and in love with me. She thought that we had a tryst last night.’ ‘And did we not, my shy one?’ He leered at me outrageously. ‘Fool,’ I said warningly. ‘Ah.’ He sighed suddenly. ‘Perhaps the truth is, I fear to show her my proof, lest ever afterwards she find all other men a disappointment.’ He gestured meaningfully at himself.

‘There, now you have said it,’ the Fool replied as if I had proven his point for him. ‘And I love you, and all that is a part of you.’ He cocked his head and the next words held a challenge. ‘And do you not return that to me?’ He waited. I desperately wished I had never started this discussion. ‘You know I love you,’ I said at last, grudgingly. ‘After all that has been between us, how can you even ask? But I love you as a man loves another man …’ Here the Fool leered at me mockingly. Then a sudden glint lit his eyes, and I knew that he was about to do something awful to me. He leaped to the top of a fallen log. From that height, he gave Starling a triumphant look and cried dramatically, ‘He loves me, he says! And I love him!’ Then with a whoop of wild laughter he leapt down and raced ahead of me on the trail.

Honour and courtesy and justice … they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them to us like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.’

I had set up my walls, but somehow I managed a dream of my very own. I dreamed that I sat by Molly’s bed and watched over her as she and Nettle slept. The wolf was at my feet, while in the chimney corner the Fool sat on a stool and nodded to himself, well pleased. Kettle’s gamecloth was spread on the table, but instead of stones, it had tiny statues of different dragons in white and black. The red stones were ships, and it was my move. I had the piece in my hand that could win the game, but I only wished to watch Molly sleep. It was almost a peaceful dream.

There are a number of old ‘White Prophecies’ that relate to the betrayal of the Catalyst. White Colum says of this event, ‘By his love is he betrayed, and his love betrayed also.’ A lesser-known scribe and prophet, Gant the White, goes into more detail. ‘The heart of the Catalyst is bared to a trusted one. All confidence is given, and all confidence betrayed. The child of the Catalyst is given into his enemies’ hands by one whose love and loyalty are above question.’ The other prophecies are more oblique, but in each case the inference is that the Catalyst is betrayed by one who has his implicit trust.

The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marvelled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.

The Wit is held in much disdain. In many areas it is regarded as a perversion, with tales told of Witted ones coupling with beasts to gain this magic, or offering blood sacrifice of human children to gain the gift of the tongues of beasts and birds. Some tale-tellers speak of bargains struck with ancient demons of the earth. In truth, I believe the Wit is as natural a magic as a man can claim. It is the Wit that lets a flock of birds in flight suddenly wheel as one, or a school of fingerlings hold place together in a swiftly flowing stream. It is also the Wit that sends a mother to her child’s bedside just as the babe is awakening. I believe it is at the heart of all wordless communication, and that all humans possess some small aptitude for it, recognized or not.

Time. I was trapped in it, fenced into a tiny piece of now that was the only time I could influence. All the soons and tomorrows I might plan were ghost things that might be snatched from me at any moment. Intentions were nothing. Now was all I had. I suddenly stood up.

I was the Fool and the Fool was me. He was the Catalyst and so was I. We were two halves of a whole, sundered and come together again. For an instant I knew him in his entirety, complete and magical, and then he was pulling apart from me, laughing, a bubble inside me, separate and unknowable, yet joined of me. You do love me! I was incredulous. He had never truly believed it before. Before, it was words. I always feared it was born of pity. But you are truly my friend. This is knowing. This is feeling what you feel for me. So this is the Skill. For a moment he revelled in simple recognition. Abruptly, another joined us. Ah, little brother, you find your ears at last! My kill is ever your kill, and we shall be pack forever! The Fool recoiled at the wolf’s friendly onslaught. I thought he would break the circle. Then suddenly he leaned into it. This? This is Nighteyes? This mighty warrior, this great heart? How to describe that moment? I had known Nighteyes so completely for so long, it shocked me to see how little the Fool had known of him. Hairy? That was how you saw me? Hairy and drooling? Your pardon. This from the Fool, quite sincerely. I am honoured to know you as you are. I had never suspected such nobility within you. Their mutual approval was almost overwhelming.

I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.

As for the Fool, he returned to Buckkeep Castle. Briefly. Girl on a Dragon left him there, and he wept as she rose without him. He was immediately acclaimed as a hero and a great warrior. I am sure that is why he fled. He accepted neither title nor land from Regal. No one is quite sure where the Fool went or what became of him after that. Starling believes he returned to his homeland. Perhaps. Perhaps, somewhere there is a toymaker who makes puppets that are a delight and a marvel. I hope he wears an earring of silver and blue. The fingerprints he left on my wrist have faded to a dusky grey. I think I will always miss him.

We dream of carving our dragon.