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

by Robin Hobb

Sometimes it seems too complete, and I wonder if it is truly mine. Am I recalling it from my own mind, or from dozens of retellings by legions of kitchen maids and ranks of scullions and herds of stable boys as they explained my presence to each other?

Shrewd is as Shrewd does, as the common folk say. He forbade any settling of the matter. ‘Regal,’ he said, in that way he has. “Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

And through it all, Nosy was at my side, so bonded to me now that I seldom separated my mind completely from his. I used his nose, his eyes, and his jaws as freely as my own, and never thought it the least bit strange.

“I guessed, I suspected, when I saw you running together like that, but damn El’s eyes, I didn’t want to be right. I didn’t want to be right. I’ve never hit a pup with that damn thing in my life. Nosy had no reason to fear it. Not unless you’d been sharing minds with him.”

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. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.

There was something more than jealousy in his tone. I have since come to know that many men always see another’s good fortune as a slight to themselves.

Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn’t wrong. Or right. It’s just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That’s all. For now, do you think you could learn how to do it, and later decide if you want to do it?”

The welfare of the people belongs to the people, and they have the right to object if their duke stewards it poorly.

“It was my idea,” he said suddenly, almost harshly. “Not his. He never approved of it. I insisted. When you’re older, you’ll understand. I can take no chances, not on anyone. But I promised him that you’d know this right from me. It was all my own idea, never his. And I will never ask him to try your mettle in such a way again. On that you have a king’s word.” He made a motion that dismissed me. And I rose, but as I did so I took from his tray a little silver knife, all engraved, that he had been using to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd’s eyes widened, but he said not a word. Two nights later, when Chade summoned me, our lessons resumed as if there had never been a pause. He talked, I listened, I played his stone game and never made an error. He gave me an assignment, and we made small jokes together. He showed me how Slink the weasel would dance for a sausage. All was well between us again. But before I left his chambers that night, I walked to his hearth. Without a word, I placed the knife on the center of his mantel shelf. Actually, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speaking of it or meeting his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it. I believe that the knife is still there.

‘On this day was born my Molly Nosegay, sweet as any bunch of posies. For her birth labors, I burned two tapers of bayberry and two cup candles scented with two handfuls of the small violets that grow near Dowell’s Mill and one handful of redroot, chopped very fine. May she do likewise when her time comes to bear a child, and her labor will be as easy as mine, and the fruit of it as perfect. So I believe.’ ”

You’re a bastard, boy. We’re always a risk and a vulnerability. We’re always expendable. Except when we are an absolute necessity to their own security.

“You must be taught the Skill, boy,” he said as if it were a decision painfully come by. “Evil times have come to us, and they will be with us for a long time. It is a time when good men must create whatever weapons they can. I will go to Shrewd yet again, and this time I will demand it. Hard times are here, boy. And I wonder if they will ever pass.” In the years to come, I was to wonder that often.

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. Let’s start again.”

“You’re Shrewd’s son,” I guessed wildly, going only by his appearance. Even before he spoke, I realized how foolish my words were. “Son?” Chade laughed grimly. “How he would scowl to hear you say that! But the truth makes him grimace even more. He is my younger half brother, boy, though he was conceived in a wedded bed and I on a military campaign near Sandsedge.” Softly he added, “My mother was a soldier when I was conceived. But she returned home to bear me, and later wedded a potter. When my mother died, her husband put me on a donkey, gave me a necklace she had worn, and told me to take it to the King at Buckkeep. I was ten. It was a long, hard road from Woolcot to Buckkeep, in those days.”

“Chade, I know the Fool is strange. But I like it when he comes to talk to me. He speaks in riddles, and he insults me, and makes fun of me, and gives himself leave to tell me things he thinks I should do, like wash my hair, or not wear yellow. But…” “Yes?” Chade prodded as if what I were saying was very important. “I like him,” I said lamely. “He mocks me, but from him, it seems a kindness. He makes me feel, well, important. That he could choose me to talk to.”

“But if noble ladies do all those things, they’ll ruin their hands with the work, and the wind will dry their hair and tan their faces. Surely Verity doesn’t deserve a woman who looks like a deckhand?” “Surely he does. Far more than he deserves a woman who looks like a fat red carp kept in a bowl.” Molly giggled. “Someone to ride beside him of a morning when he takes Hunter out for a gallop, or someone who can look at a section of map he’s just finished and actually understand just how fine a piece of work it is. That’s what Verity deserves.” “I’ve never ridden a horse,” Molly objected suddenly. “And I know few letters.”

“I must ask,” he said, and the venom in his voice was hungry with hatred. “Are you his catamite, that he lets you suck strength from him? Is that why he is so possessive of you?” “Catamite?” I repeated, not knowing the word. He smiled. It made his cadaverous face even more skull-like. “Did you think I hadn’t discovered him? Did you think you’d be free to draw on his strength for this test? You won’t. Be assured, bastard, you won’t.”

My Man still chose to give me a name, so He could not have been totally displeased. The name is in the old tongue, which has no letters and cannot be written. Nor have I ever found any with whom I chose to share the knowledge of my Man name. But its ancient meaning, I think, I can divulge here. Catalyst. The Changer.

I was very comfortable until someone opened a stable door and left it ajar. A nasty little wind came creeping across the stable floor to chill me, and I looked up with a growl. I smelled Burrich and ale. Burrich came slowly through the dark, with a muttered, “It’s all right, Smithy,” as he passed me. I put my head down as he began to climb his stairs. Suddenly there was a shout and men falling down the stairs. They struggled as they fell. I leaped to my feet, snarling and barking. They landed half atop me. A boot kicked at me, and I seized the leg above it in my teeth and clamped my jaws. I caught more boot and pant than flesh, but he hissed in anger and pain, and struck at me. A knife went into my side. I set my teeth harder and held on, snarling around my mouthful. Other dogs had awakened and were barking, the horses were stamping in their stalls. Boy, boy, I called for help. I felt him with me, but he didn’t come. The intruder kicked me, but I wouldn’t let go. Burrich lay in the straw and I smelled his blood. He did not move. I snarled around the mouthful. I heard old Vixen flinging herself against the door upstairs, trying vainly to get to her master. Again and then again the knife plunged into me. I cried out to my boy a last time, and then I could no longer hold on. I was flung off the kicking leg, to strike the side of a stall. I was drowning, blood in my mouth and nostrils. Running feet. Pain in the dark. I hitched closer to Burrich. I pushed my nose under his hand...

“It made me wish there were a place as much me as that place is you. A place I would keep as secret.” The door halted a handbreadth short of closed. “Take some advice, and you may survive this trip. When considering a man’s motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.”

“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.” He looked at me incredulously. “You believed I would kill a dog for something you did?” “I only knew he was gone. I could imagine nothing else. I thought it was my punishment.” 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?” I shook my head slowly. “Oh, Fitz,” he said sadly. One of the horses came to nudge at him, and he petted it absently. “I thought you were stubborn and sullen. You thought you had been grievously wronged. No wonder we have been so much at odds.” “It can be undone,” I offered quietly. “I have missed you, you know. Missed you sorely, despite all our differences.”

Not many knew Galen was the Queen’s bastard and his half brother.

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.