Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

‘Well, what is?’ I demanded, suddenly and truly angry. Why did they have to make this so hard? Words and thoughts suddenly gouted from me like poison from a festering wound. ‘You’d have me devote myself to my king and sacrifice all else to it, as you did. Give up the woman I love to follow a king like a dog at his heels, as you did. And when that king abandoned you? You swallowed it, you raised his bastard for him. Then they took it all away from you, stable, horses, dogs, men to command. They left you nothing, not even a roof over your head, those kings you were sworn to. So what did you do? With nothing else left to you, you hung onto me, dragged the Bastard out of a coffin and forced him back to life. A life I hate, a life I don’t want!’ I glared at him accusingly. He stared at me, bereft of words. I wanted to stop, but something drove me on. The anger felt good, like a cleansing fire. I clenched my hands into fists as I demanded, ‘Why are you always there? Why do you always stand me up again, for them to knock down? For what? To make me owe you something? To give you a claim on my life because you don’t have the spine to have a life of your own? All you want to do is make me just like you, a man with no life of my own, a man who gives it all up for my king. Can’t you see there’s more to being alive than giving it all up for someone else?’ I met his eyes and then looked away from the pained astonishment I saw there. ‘No,’ I said dully after a breath. ‘You don’t see, you...

But it wasn’t just work he taught me. Cleanliness. Honesty. He put a value on what my mother and grandmother had tried to instil in me so long ago. He showed them to me as a man’s values, not just manners for inside a woman’s house. He taught me to be a man, not a beast in a man’s shape. He made me see it was more than rules, it was a way of being. A life, rather than a living.’ He

Once I got away from him, I was smart enough to stay away from him. To hunt that one is as wise as to go hunting a porcupine. I cannot leave this alone, Nighteyes. I understand. I am the same about porcupines. And so he perceived my vendetta with Regal as equivalent to his weakness for porcupines.

‘Yesterday was an ugly day. I would not base any life decision on it.’

You are not a man as ordinary men are. They think they have a right to all beasts; to hunt them and eat them, or to subjugate them and rule their lives. You know you have no such right to mastery. The horse that carries you will do so because he wishes to, as does the wolf that hunts beside you. You have a deeper sense of yourself in the world. You believe you have a right, not to rule it, but to be part of it. Predator or prey; there is no shame to being either one. As time goes on, you will find you have urgent questions. What must you do when your friend wishes to run with a pack of true wolves? I promise you, that time will come. What must he do if you marry and have a child? When the time comes for one of you to die, as it must, how does the other make room for what is left, and carry on alone? In time you will hunger for others of your kind. You will need to know how to sense them and how to seek them out. There are answers to these questions, Old Blood answers, ones I cannot tell you in a day, ones you cannot understand in a week. You need those answers. And you will come back for them.’ I looked down at the trodden soil of the forest path.

‘That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.’ ‘Well it is important …’ I began. ‘Rubbish!’ he exclaimed. ‘Mere plumbing, when all is said and done. Why is it important?’

‘Oh, when the Fool pisses Pray tell, what’s the angle? Did we take down his pants Would he dimple or dangle?’

‘And is that how a man loves a woman,’ he interrupted me suddenly, ‘for bedding?’ ‘It’s a part of it!’ I felt suddenly defensive but could not say why. He arched an eyebrow at me and said calmly, ‘You are confusing plumbing and love again.’ ‘It’s more than plumbing!’ I shouted at him. A bird abruptly flew off, cawing. I glanced back at Kettle and

‘In truth, Fitz, I’ve no idea. The words popped into my head and I said them. I often say things I have not well considered.’

Afterwards, I felt … tricked. Foolish. Gullible, that I had thought ideals could protect me. 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.’

‘When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh,’

‘I wish you to attempt nothing. I wish you to do.