Assassin's Fate (The Fitz and the Fool #3)

by Robin Hobb

Each child in the outer circle shouts a sentence or a phrase. I cannot hear what they are saying, but the blinded child can. She begins to shout back at them, her words torn by a slowly rising wind. ‘Burn it all.’ ‘The dragons fall’. ‘The sea will rise.’ ‘The jewel strewn skies.’ ‘One comes as two’. ‘The four shall rue.’ ‘Two come as one.’ ‘Your reign is done!’ ‘Forfeit all lives.’ ‘No one survives!’ At that last shout, a wind bursts from the child in the middle. Bits of her fly in all directions and the wind picks up the screaming children and scatters them far and wide. All becomes black save for one circle of white. In the centre of the circle is the blindfold with its black eyes staring, staring.

Find a weapon, a stick, a rock, anything. If you cannot escape, make them pay as dearly as you can for capturing you. Fight them all the way. Yes, Wolf Father. I spoke his name in my mind to give me courage. I reminded myself that I was the child of a wolf, even if my teeth and claws were pathetic things. I would fight.

Stop being afraid. Stop feeling the pain. Fight! Wolf Father was suddenly with me, his teeth bared and every hackle standing up. I can’t! Reppin is going to kill me! Hurt her back. Bite her, scratch her, kick her! Make her pay for giving you pain. She is going to beat you anyway, so take what you can of her flesh. Try to kill her.

Chew your hands free. I can’t. My lips were smashed and bloody. My teeth felt loose and sore in my gums. You can. Because you must. Chew your hands free and untie your feet, and we will go. I will show you where to go. There is someone kin to us not far from here. If I can wake him he will protect you. If not, I will teach you to hunt.

I didn’t know we were in the mountains! You lived in the mountains with my father? I did. I have been here before. Enough. Start chewing.

Stay still, Wolf Father warned me. Learn all you can by listening. Then, with a touch of pride, See, even with your poor cow’s teeth, you have taught her to fear you. You must teach all of them to fear you. Even the old bitch has learned some caution.

So they probably will not kill you. Probably? Terror swept through me. I want to live. Even if I live as their captive, I want to live. You think that is true, but I assure you it is not. Death is better than the sort of captivity they plan for you. I have been a captive, a toy for heartless men. I made them fear me. It is why they sought to sell me. It was why your father could buy my freedom. I do not know that tale.

Reppin spoke quickly, as if the words leapt from her. ‘I dreamed a nut in a wild river. I saw someone pull it from the water. The nut was set down and struck many times, to try to break it. But it only got thicker and harder. Then someone crushed it. Flames and darkness and a foul stench and screams came out of it. The flames wrote words. “Comes the Destroyer that you have made!” And a great wind swept through Clerres and picked us all up and scattered us.’ ‘Comes the Destroyer!’

He did not soften how much he hated his captors, or how he had first hated my father, even when my father freed him. Hate had been his habit then, and hate had fed him and kept him alive when there was nothing else.

‘Listen, you little wretch,’ she snarled at me. ‘You can avoid a beating, but only if you obey me. Is that clear?’ She bargains. That means she fears you.

I did. I turned my head slowly on my stiff neck, following the scent. There. A pale, slender cylinder, half-covered by a scrap of torn canvas. I tried to stoop down, but my knees folded and I nearly fell on my face. With my bound hands, I awkwardly picked up the candle. It was broken, held together at the break only by the wick, but I knew it. I lifted it to my face and smelled my mother’s handiwork. ‘How can this be here?’ I asked the night softly. I looked at the nondescript scrap of canvas. Nearby there was a lady’s lacy glove, sodden and mildewed. I did not know either of those things, but I knew this candle.

All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.

Malta’s voice rang with command as she cried out, ‘This is not how we treat guests and ambassadors! Release her, Rapskal, this moment!’ Her cheeks were flushed and the crest of flesh above her brow bloomed with colour.

Of all the Elderlings present, she was most heavily modified by her dragon’s touch. Her warning and Amber’s threat cleared a small space around us.

‘Of all people, Rapskal, you should know that Thymara cannot be bought. Answer me this. Who has it harmed that this lady has silvered her fingers? Only herself. She will die of it. So what worse can we do to her? Let her go. Let all of them go, and let them go with my thanks.’

Amber spoke. She sounded calm but she pushed her words so that all could hear. ‘There was Silver on my fingers before you were born, I believe, General Rapskal. Before your dragons hatched, before Kelsingra was found and reclaimed, I bore what we of the Six Duchies call Skill on my fingers. And your queen can attest to that.’

‘If I may speak?’ For years, as King Shrewd’s jester, the Fool had had to make even his whispered comments heard across a large and sometimes crowded room. He had trained his voice to carry, and it now cut through not only Rapskal’s shout but the muttering of the crowd as well. A simmering silence filled the room. He did not move like a blind man as he stepped into the space his threat had cleared. He was a performer stepping onto his stage. It was in the sudden grace of his movements and his storyteller’s voice, and the sweep of his gloved hand. He was the Fool to me, and the layer of Amber but a part of his performance.

‘Recall a summer day, dear Queen Malta. You were but a girl, and all was in turmoil in your life. All your family’s hopes for financial survival depended on the successful launch of the Paragon, a liveship so insane that thrice he had capsized and killed all his crew. But the mad ship was your only hope, and into his salvage and refitting the Vestrit family had poured the last of their resources.’

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.’ Malta’s smile was like sunlight. ‘And you warned me that sometimes people wished that tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.’ ‘I did.’

‘It’s true!’ The words burst from King Reyn along with a laugh born of both relief and joy. ‘On the back of your neck, my dear! I saw them there in the days when your hair was as black as a crow’s wing, before Tintaglia turned it to gold. Three greyish ovals, like silver fingerprints gone dusty with age.’

‘It didn’t come from a well. It came from King Verity’s own hands, that he covered in Skill to work his great and final magic.

My king never allowed me to go there with him, lest I give way to the temptation to plunge myself into it.’ ‘Temptation?’ Thymara was shocked. ‘I who am privileged to use Silver to do works for the city, feel no temptation to plunge myself into it. Indeed, I fear it.’ ‘That is because you were not born with it coursing in your blood,’ the Fool said, ‘as some Farseers are. As Prince FitzChivalry was, born with the Skill as a magic within him, one that he can use to shape children as some might shape stone.’

‘You thank me.’ Reyn gave a snort of laughter. ‘I would better deserve a curse from you after what we have put you through.’ ‘Not you.’ ‘I will leave you in peace,’ he excused himself, and remained outside with his queen as my small party entered my room.

‘Fool, we are too close. For every hurt I removed from your flesh, my body assumed the wound. Not as virulently as the injuries you carried but when I healed my knife-stabs in your belly, I felt them in mine the next day. When I closed the sores in your back, they opened in mine.’ ‘I saw those wounds!’ Perseverance gasped. ‘I thought you’d been attacked. Stabbed in the back.’ I did not pause for his words. ‘When I healed the bones around your eye sockets, mine swelled and blackened the next day. If you touch me, Fool—’

clodpoll.’

‘Fitz. Fitz? Look at me. What do you see?’ I prised my eyelids open and looked at him. I thought I knew what he needed to hear. ‘I see my friend. My oldest, dearest friend. No matter what guise you wear.’ ‘And you see me clearly?’ Something in his voice made me lift my head. I blinked blearily and stared at him. After a time, he swam into focus. ‘Yes.’

‘I used to have nightmares about him. Once I wet my bed.’ A boy gave a half-laugh. ‘Him? Why?’ ‘Because of the first time I met him. I was just a child, really. A child given what seemed like a harmless task. To leave a gift for a baby.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He caught me in Bee’s room. Cornered me like a rat. He must have known I was coming, though I can’t guess how. He was suddenly there with a knife at my throat.’

‘You thought he’d kill you? Tom Badgerlock?’ ‘I knew who he was. Rosemary had told me. And she’d told me that he was far more dangerous than I could imagine, in more ways. Witted. And that there had always been rumours that he had … appetites.’

‘That he might desire boys as much as he liked women.’ A dead silence. Then a lad laughed. ‘Him? Not him. There was only one for him. Lady Molly. It was always a joke among the servants at Withywoods.’ He laughed again and then gasped, ‘“Knock twice,” the kitchen maids would giggle. “And then wait and knock again. Never go in until one of them invites you. You never know where they will be going at one another.” The men of the estate were proud of him. “That old stud hasn’t lost his fire,” they’d say. “In his study. In the gardens. Out in the orchards.”’

‘When Lady Shun first came to Withywoods, one of the new housemaids said he’d gone off to find himself a willing woman. Cook Nutmeg told me of it. She told that housemaid, “Not him. It was only Lady Molly and never anyone else for him. He can’t even see another woman.” Then she told Revel what the housemaid had said. Revel called her into his study. “He’s not Lord Grabandpinch, he’s Holder Badgerlock. And we won’t have gossip here.” And then he told her to pack her things. So Cook Nutmeg told us.’

‘And now? Do you still fear him?’ the boy asked. The man was slow to reply. ‘He is to be feared. Make no mistake in that, Per. Fitz is a dangerous man. But I’m not here because I have a rightful caution of him. I’m here to do my father’s bidding. He tasked me to watch over him. To keep him safe from himself. To bring him home, when all is done, if I can.’ ‘That won’t be easy,’ the boy said reluctantly. ‘I heard Foxglove talking to Riddle after that battle in the forest. She said he has a mind to hurt himself. To end himself, since his wife is dead and his child gone.’

‘My intent was never to interfere, but only to make the small changes that would let the children live.’ The child was mine. ‘Do you prefer a dead child to a live one?’ Mine is mine. Not yours. The logic of a three-year-old. The pressure on my chest increased, and a translucent shape coalesced above me. She shimmered blue and silver. I recognized which child she claimed by the markings she shared with the child’s mother. The mother had been the woman who claimed to work with Silver. Thymara, the winged-and-clawed Elderling.

Die in your dreams, wake up insane. Or so the old Elderling saying went. Your connections to this world are strong, little human. There is something about you … yet you are not dragon touched by any dragon I know. How is that possible?

You seek revenge on dragons? For what? My arm fell lifelessly away. I did not even feel my fingers lose their grip on the knife. Pain and lack of air were emptying me of will. I did not utter the words, for I had no air left. I thought them at her. Not revenge on dragons. On the Servants. I’m going to Clerres to kill all the Servants. They hurt my friend and destroyed my child. Clerres? Dread. A dragon could feel dread? Amazing. Even more surprising, it seemed to be dread of the unknown. A city of bones and white stones far south of here.

I have not felt this healthy since … since before I was beaten that night in Buckkeep Town.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ He stared at me. ‘You’re sorry for healing me?’

‘There’s a scroll-tube here, a heavy one with a funny crest on it. A chicken wearing a crown.’ ‘The crowned rooster is the Khuprus family crest,’ Amber told us. A shiver went up my back. ‘That’s different to a rooster crown?’ ‘It is. Though I have wondered if they have some ancient relationship.’

He thought she would turn and dart her head at him and he would loop the chain around her neck. But it was a dragon who turned on him, for he was treading on a dragon’s tail. ‘No,’ she said to him very loudly. ‘But I will have you.’ The picture I have painted for this dream is not very good, for my father’s red ink does not gleam and glisten as the snake did.

Next time, for a faster kill, you must find and bite a place where the blood leaps forth in gushes. But for a first kill, you did well. Even if this is meat you cannot eat. I didn’t know my bite could kill her. No regrets, Wolf Father chided me. There is no going back to do a thing or not do a thing.

If you had not made her fear you she would have done you many more hurts. And the others would have joined in. They are a pack and they will follow their leader. You made the bitch fear you, and the others know that. What she fears, they will fear.

Capra and Coultrie both insisted that we had already endured the Unexpected Son; that he was the one who freed IceFyre and put an end to Ilistore. So Beloved told us when he came back to Clerres. He said that one of his Catalysts, the noble assassin, was the Unexpected Son.

they called Ilistore the Pale Woman. And she was defeated by the Unexpected Son. All know that! Three of the Four say that the dreams related to him are fulfilled and those prophecies should be discarded now. Only Symphe thought otherwise. And Dwalia.’

I held my breath. They were speaking of my father! I knew from poring through his papers that the Fool had said he was the Unexpected Son. But I had never grasped that in some far-off land he had been t...

‘I think Dwalia only wants vengeance. You recall how she was about Beloved. She holds him responsible for Ilistore’s death. And you know whose home we stole Bee from? FitzChivalry’s.’ Alaria sat up in her blankets. ‘No!’ ‘Yes. FitzChivalry Farseer.’

‘Think back. Recall the name Beloved shouted when his foot was being crushed? The name of his true Catalyst. He’d held that back, saying he’d had many: an assassin, a nine-fingered slave boy, a ship’s captain, a spoiled girl, a noble bastard. Not true. His one real Catalyst was FitzChivalry Farseer.

But that’s who Bee is. The daughter of a Catalyst.’ ‘They said the house belonged to Badgerlock, Tom Badgerlock. Bee said that was her father’s name.’ ‘So. You are surprised that the biting little bitch lies?’

‘I dreamed that someone brought a small package into a room and no one wanted it. But then someone opened it. And flames and smoke and loud noises came out and the room fell apart all around everyone.’ ‘You did not dream that,’ Reppin exploded with disdain. ‘You are such a liar! You heard me talking about that dream and just repeated what you heard.’

The dream-images were confusing. I held a torch and stood at a crossroads under a wasp nest. A scarred little girl held a baby and Nettle smiled at her although both Nettle and the girl were weeping. A man burned the porridge he was cooking, and wolves howled in anguish. An acorn was planted in gravel, and a tree of flames grew from

Someone had deliberately marked a deep straight scratch through the rune, as if to forbid or warn anyone who chose to use that face of the portal. ‘Da!’ I cried out, a desperate call that no one could hear. ‘Da! Help me!’ In the next moment, my cheek touched the cold surface and I was pulled into tarry blackness.

The creature reaches through bars around the bowl to scoop up some of the dirty water. He slurps some of the filthy water and smiles with an ugly wide mouth. I do not like to look at him, he is so wrong. The serpent coils in on itself and tries to bite him. He laughs and shuffles away.

‘So, are we ready?’ Lant asked as he slid a small, flat-handled knife into a sheath concealed at his hip. It startled me. Who was this man? The answer came to me. This was the Lant that Riddle and Nettle had both admired and enjoyed. I understood suddenly why Chade had asked him to watch over me. It was not flattering but it was oddly reassuring.