Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)

by Robin Hobb

If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I became.

did not feel protected by him, but confined. He was the warden that ensured my isolation with fanatical fervor. Utter loneliness was planted in me then, and sent its deep roots down into me.

All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living.

“Don’t be scared, now. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And, anyway,” he said, and I heard him relenting, “they’ve only told us that you’re to have a room up at the keep. No one’s said that you’ve got to sleep in it every night. Some nights, if things are a bit too quiet for you, you can find your way down here. Ey, Fitz? Does that sound right to you?” “I suppose so,” I muttered.

That was how Chivalry ruled. By example, and by the grace of his words. So should any real prince do.”

“I don’t ask any more of you than I ask of myself. You know that’s true.” “I know that,” I replied, surprised that he’d mentioned it further. “I just want to do my best by you.” This was a whole new idea to me. After a moment I asked, “Because if you could make Chivalry proud of me, of what you’d made me into, then maybe he would come back?”

“Now you’ll sleep,” he informed me in a thick voice. “And tomorrow we’ll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn’t kill you after all.”

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

“Yes,” I said simply, and our eyes suddenly met. She stared into me in the same distracted way that she often stared out the window. Abruptly, her eyes brimmed with tears. “Sometimes, you are so like him that…” She choked. “You should have been mine! It isn’t fair, you should have been mine!” She cried out the words so fiercely that I thought she would strike me. Instead, she leaped at me and caught me in a flying hug, at the same time treading upon her dog and overturning a vase of greenery. The dog sprang up with a yelp, the vase shattered on the floor, sending water and shards in all directions, while my lady’s forehead caught me squarely under the chin,

It was inside me. The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t love myself. Loved me even if I hated it. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn’t crawl any farther. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred a trust. It was Smithy.

“Bring me nothing. Do me no favors. Go your own way, and be whatever you will. I’m done with you.” He spoke to the wall. In his voice was no mercy for either of us.

We emerged from his kennels and out into the sun, where an older dog slept lazily on a pile of straw. “Sleep on, old man. You’ve fathered enough pups that you never need hunt again, except you love it so,” Rurisk told him genially. At his master’s voice, the old hound heaved himself to his feet and came to lean affectionately on Rurisk. He looked up at me, and it was Nosy. I stared at him, and his copper-ore eyes returned the look. I quested softly toward him, and for a moment received only puzzlement. And then a flood of warmth, of affection shared and remembered. There was no doubt that he was Rurisk’s hound now; the intensity of the bond that had

“I knew him when he was just a puppy,” I told him. “Burrich sent him to me, in care of a wandering scribe, these many years ago,” Rurisk told me. “He has brought me great pleasure, in company and in hunting.”

“I just saw Nosy. He’s fine. Older now, but he’s had a happy life. All these years, Burrich, I always believed you killed him that night. Dashed out his brains, cut his throat, strangled him—I imagined it a dozen different ways, a thousand times. All those years.”

For a long time he was still. When he looked back up at me, I could see his torment. “How you must have hated me.” “And feared you.” “All those years? And you never learned better of me, never thought to yourself, He would not do such a thing?”

“It can be undone,” I offered quietly. “I have missed you, you know. Missed you sorely, despite all our differences.”

After I put it into him, he managed to hit me twice, good solid punches, before he fell back, dying. Good-bye, Cob. As he fell I suddenly saw a freckly stable boy saying, “Come along now, there’s some good fellows.” It could have gone so many different ways. I had known this man; killing him killed a part of my own life.

“If your ignorance were not protecting you, August, I might dispel it.” Burrich stood, looking dangerous.

Of one other I must speak, one dragged into that conflict and intrigue only by his loyalty to me. To the end of my days, I will bear the scars he gave me. His worn teeth sank deeply into my hand several times before he managed to drag me from that pool. How he did it, I will never know. But his head still rested on my chest when they found us; his mortal bonds to this world had broken. Nosy was dead. I believe he gave his life freely, recalling that we had been good to one another when we were puppies. Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But we grieve for many years.