Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

“And what Rosemary did not overhear, Justin and Serene did. They were leeched onto the King, sucking Skill-strength out of him, and privy to every thought he Skilled to Verity, or had from him. Once they knew what I was doing, serving as King’s Man, they began to Skill-spy on me as well. I did not know such a thing could be done. But Galen had discovered how, and taught it to his students. You remember Will, Hostler’s son? The coterie member? He was the best at it. He could make you believe he wasn’t even there when he was.”

What Regal did, taking Verity’s crown when he knew his brother was alive…King Shrewd didn’t want to go on living, knowing Regal was capable of that. He asked me to be King’s Man, to lend him the strength to Skill a farewell to Verity. But Serene and Justin were waiting.” I paused, new pieces of the puzzle falling into place. “I should have known it was too easy. No guards on the King. Why? Because Regal didn’t need them. Because Serene and Justin were leeched onto him. Regal was finished with his father. He had crowned himself King-in-Waiting; there was no more good to be had out of Shrewd for him. So they drained King Shrewd dry of Skill-strength. They killed him. Before he could even bid Verity farewell. Probably Regal had told them to be sure he did not Skill to Verity again.

“It was not the Fool who was our downfall. It was I.” And that, I think, was the moment when I came fully back to myself. I had said the most unsayable thing, faced my most unfaceable truth. I had betrayed them all. “The Fool warned me. He said I would be the death of kings, if I did not learn to leave things alone. Chade warned me. He tried to make me promise I would set no more wheels in motion. But I would not. So my actions killed my king. If I had not been helping him to Skill, he would not have been so open to his killers. I opened him up, reaching for Verity. But those two leeches came in instead. The King’s assassin. Oh, in so many, many ways, Shrewd. I am so sorry, my king. So sorry.

Burrich grinned hard. “She and the Fool took what had been packed for Shrewd. And they left on two of the best horses ever to come out of Buckkeep’s stables. I’ll wager they got to the Mountains safely, boy. Sooty and Rud are probably grazing in Mountain pastures now.”

I had felt fear before. Often. Fear when I had fought Forged ones, fear when we had battled Red Ship warriors, fear when I had confronted Serene. Fear that warned, that spurred, that gave one the edge to stay alive. But the night fear was an unmanning terror, a hope that death would come and end it, because I was broken and knew I would give them anything rather than face more pain.

Ostensibly the Buck troops were to report to Captain Keffel of the Farrow men, the commander of Lord Bright’s guard. In reality, Foxglove of the Queen’s Guard, Kerf of the Buckkeep Guard, and old Red of King Shrewd’s guard banded together and kept their own counsel. If they reported regularly to anyone, it was Lady Patience. In time the Buck soldiers came to speak of her as the Lady of Buckkeep.

“You but put your finger on the spot where I had been pressing myself the most. Sometimes a man doesn’t know how badly he’s hurt until someone else probes the wound.”

“Ever since you came back from the Mountain Kingdom, it’s been as if you were spoiling for a fight. With anyone. When you were a boy and you were sullen or sulky, I could put it down to your being a boy, with a boy’s judgment and frustrations. But you came back with an…anger. Like a challenge to the world at large, to kill you if it could. It wasn’t just that you threw yourself in Regal’s path: whatever was most dangerous to you, you plunged yourself into.

Look back over the last year: every time I turned about, here was Fitz, railing at the world, in the middle of a fistfight, in the midst of a battle, wrapped up in bandaging, drunk as a fisherman, or limp as a string and mewling for elfbark. When were you calm and thoughtful, when were you merry with your friends, when were you ever simply at peace? If you weren’t challenging your enemies, you were driving away your friends. What happened between you and the Fool? Where is Molly now? You’ve just sent Burrich packing. Who’s next?” “You, I suppose.”

Burrich’s stableboy, your apprentice assassin, Verity’s pet, Patience’s page. When did I get to be mine, for me?” I asked the question fiercely. “When did you not?” Chade demanded just as heatedly. “That’s all you’ve done since you came back from the Mountains. You went to Verity to say you’d had enough of being an assassin just when quiet work was needed. Patience tried to warn you clear of Molly, but you had your way there as well. It made her a target. You pulled Patience into plots that exposed her to danger. You bonded to the wolf, despite all Burrich said to you. You questioned my every decision about King Shrewd’s health. And your next-to-last stupid act at Buckkeep was to volunteer to be part of an uprising against the crown. You brought us as close to a civil war as we’ve been in a hundred years.”

“With all your years of training from me, all my schooling in quiet work, you went racing about in the keep with a drawn knife, cutting the throat of one, and stabbing the other to death in the Great Hall before all assembled nobles….My fine apprentice assassin! That was the only way you could think of to accomplish it?”

You should never have let them offer you the rule of Buckkeep. Had you been doing your tasks properly, such a thought would never have occurred to them. Over and over and over again, you forget your place. You are not a prince, you are an assassin. You are not the player, you are the game-piece. And when you make your own moves, you set every other strategy awry and endanger every piece on the board!”

I took my image of Regal and combined it with his images of the animal trader who had caged him when he was a cub and beat him with a brass-bound club. Nighteyes considered that. 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.

I spoke it aloud, and the rustiness of my voice only added to it. “As soon as Burrich left me here, alone, I reverted to something less than an animal. No time, no cleanliness, no goals, no awareness of anything save eating and sleeping. This was what he was trying to warn me about, all those years. I did just what he had always feared I would do.”

What the Wit may be is a man’s acceptance of the beast nature within himself, and hence an awareness of the element of humanity that every animal carries within it as well. The legendary loyalty that a bonded animal feels for his Witted one is not at all the same as what a loyal beast gives its master. Rather it is a reflection of the loyalty that the Witted one has pledged to his animal companion, like for like.

It jolted me to think this was how Verity still perceived himself. You, here? He shook his head in rebuke. This is dangerous, boy. Even I am a fool to attempt this. And yet what else can we do, when they call us to them? He considered me, standing so mute before him. When did you gain the strength and talent to Skill-walk? I made no reply. I had no answers, no thoughts of my own. I felt I was a wet sheet flapping in the night wind, no more substantial than a blowing leaf. Fitz, this is a danger to both of us. Go back. Go back now.

I had three fish to take back to camp, leaving two, against my better judgment, for Nighteyes. Fishing and ear scratching. The two reasons men were given hands,

I wondered if there was any way to live amongst other people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations and dependencies.

Stripped of everything I had once unthinkingly relied on, it was not just my courage I had come to doubt. I questioned all my abilities now. Assassin, King’s Man, warrior, man…was I any of them anymore? I tried to recall the brash youngster who had pulled an oar on Verity’s warship Rurisk, who had flung himself unthinkingly into battle wielding an axe. I could not grasp he had been me.

There are men here, smelling of carrion and their own filth. I can smell them, I can see them, but I cannot sense them otherwise. The distress he always felt in the presence of Forged ones drifted back to me. I shared it. I knew they had once been human, and shared that Wit spark that every living creature does. To me, it was passing strange to see them move and speak when I could not sense they were alive. To Nighteyes, it was as if stones walked and ate.

Forging did not make folk stupid, nor slow. They could no longer sense or feel emotions from others, nor, it seemed, recall what those emotions might make an enemy do. That often made their actions almost incomprehensible. It did not make them any less intelligent than they had been when whole, or any less skilled with their weapons. They did, however, act with an immediacy in satisfying their wants that was wholly animal. The horse they stole one day they might eat the next, simply because hunger was a more immediate want than the convenience of riding. Nor did they cooperate in a battle. Within their own groups, there was no loyalty. They were as likely to turn on one another to gain plunder as to attack a common enemy. They would travel together, and attack together, but not as a concerted effort. Yet they remained brutally cunning, remorselessly clever in their efforts to get what they desired.

A flood of doubt undercut my concentration. I suspected I was overmatched, and so feared the pain to come that I could not plot how to avoid it. Desperation to avoid injury is not the same as determination to win.

A terrier I had bonded with, Smithy, not even full grown, had fought in the dark against one who had attacked Burrich in my absence. Fought, and died later of his injuries, before I could even reach his side again. I discovered abruptly there was a threat more potent than my own death. Fear for myself crumpled away before my terror of losing Nighteyes.

“If he had killed the man attacking us first, it would have been wiser,” she insisted stubbornly. I undid my bundle and shook out my blanket. I lay down on it. I was hungry, but there was nothing to be done about that. I could do something about how tired I was. “Are you going to sleep?” Piper asked. Her face reflected as much alarm as she could muster in her drugged state. “Yes.” “What if more Forged ones come?” she demanded. “Then Honey can kill them in whatever order she deems wise,” I suggested sourly.

Ghostly fingers plucked at me as if seeking my attention. Fitz. Be careful. Get back. Verity. But his Skilling had no more force than a puff of wind, despite the effort I knew it cost him. Something was between us, a cold fog, yielding yet resisting, entangling like brambles. I tried to care, tried to find enough fear to send me fleeing back to my body. But it was like being trapped inside a dream and trying to awaken. I could not find a way to struggle out of it. I could not find the will to try. A whiff of dog-magic stench in the air, and look what I find. Will hooked into me like cat claws, drew me tight against him. Hello, Bastard.

But within me, a wolf was waiting for him. My brother! Nighteyes declared, and launched at him, tooth and nail. Somewhere in the vast distance, Will shrieked in horror and dismay. However strong he might be in the Skill, he had no knowledge at all of the Wit. He was as powerless before Nighteyes’ attack as I had been before his.

He had lost all concentration and control over his Skill and I had been able to break free of him. I could not see what was happening to Will, but I sensed Nighteyes’ snapping jaws. I was buffeted by the strength of Will’s horror. He fled, breaking the Skill link between us so suddenly that for a moment I was unsure of my identity.

I was so scared. I nearly died. I understand now why we must kill them all, he said calmly. If we do not, they will never let us be. We must hunt them down to their own lair and kill them all. It was the only comfort he could offer me.

Such records may be intricate things, for every party involved must be identified in a way that is unmistakable. Not just by name and profession, but by lineage and location and appearance. As often as not, a minstrel is then called to make his mark as witness to what the scribe has written, and for this reason, it is not unusual to find them traveling in company together, or for one person to profess both trades.

No lord wishes to be ill remembered in the tellings of minstrels and scribes, or worse yet, not remembered at all.

It was as Chade had predicted: there were no silks, no brandies, no fine Bingtown gemwork, nothing from the Coastal Duchies, nor from the lands beyond. Regal’s attempt to strangle the Mountain Kingdom’s trade routes had also deprived the Crowsneck merchants of Mountain amber and furs and other goods. Crowsneck had been a trading town. Now it was stagnant, choking on a surplus of its own goods and naught to trade them for.

When Shrewd had been King of the Six Duchies, the river had run with gold, but now that Regal wore the crown, the coasts all ran with blood. There was a second verse, saying it was better to pay taxes to fight the Red Ships than pay them to a king that hid, but that one was interrupted by the arrival of the City Guard.

Maybe we should help him? Nighteyes asked uncertainly. Hush, I warned him. Please, help him. The plea had grown in urgency and strength. Old Blood asks of Old Blood.

Black Rolf stepped back to the door to look out at us. “Come in and be welcome,” he offered. When he saw that I hesitated, he added, “Old Blood does not turn on Old Blood.”

“Old Blood always welcomes Old Blood,”

“You mean the Wit?” I asked. “No. So it is named by those who have no knowing of it. That is the name it is despised by. Those of us who are of the Old Blood do not name it so.”

“Both of you,” he clarified for me. “Among the Old Blood, two are treated as one. Always.” “Sleet and I welcome you as well,” the woman added softly. “I am Holly.” I nodded gratefully to her invitation, and reached for my wolf. Nighteyes? Will you come in?

“I don’t ‘admit it openly’ to just anyone. I supposed that you knew of me, right away, as Hilda and I are always aware when there are others of the Old Blood nearby. But, as to your question…my mother was Old Blood, and two of her children inherited it. She sensed it in us, of course, and raised us in the ways. And when I was of an age, as a man, I made my quest.”

Rolf was regarding me with a distaste as fervent as Burrich’s was for the Wit while Holly silently shook her head. “You bonded as a child? Forgive me, but that is perversion. As well allow a little girl to be wed off to a grown man. A child is not ready to share the full life of a beast; all Old Blood parents I know most carefully shelter their children from such contacts.” Sympathy touched his face. “Still, it must have been excruciating for your bond-friend to be taken from you. But whoever did it, did the right thing, whatever his reason.” He looked at me more closely. “I am surprised you survived, knowing nothing of the Old Blood ways.”

Our parents cherish our lines, and help us to find proper mates when the time comes, so that our blood may not be thinned.”

Refuse politely, Nighteyes suggested immediately. Bad enough to den among men. If you start sleeping near bears, you shall stink so that we can never hunt well again. Nor do I desire to share our kills with a teasing crow. He paused. Unless they know of a woman who is bonded with a bitch-wolf? A smile twitched at the corner of Black Rolf’s mouth. I suspected he was more aware of what we said than he let on, and I told Nighteyes as much.

Tell me. When was the last time you encountered a large carnivore?” Dogs chased me some nights ago, Nighteyes said. “Dogs will stand and bark from their territory,” Rolf observed. “I meant a wild carnivore.” “I don’t think I’ve seen any since we bonded,” I admitted unwillingly. “They will avoid you as surely as Forged ones will follow you,” Black Rolf said calmly.

“Are you suggesting that Nighteyes and I should refrain from using the Wit?” “I am suggesting that perhaps you should stay here for a while, and take the time to learn to master the talents of the Old Blood. Or you may find yourself in more battles such as the one you fought yesterday.” He permitted himself a small smile. “I said nothing to you of that attack,” I said quietly. “You did not need to,” he pointed out. “I am sure that everyone of Old Blood for leagues around heard you when you fought them. Until you both learn to control how you speak to one another, nothing between you is truly private.”

“Did you never think it strange that Forged ones would spend time attacking a wolf when there is apparently nothing to gain from such an attack? They only focus on him because he is bonded to you.”

Of late, many of the Old Blood have been sold to the King, by neighbors, and even family. His gold is good, and he does not even ask much proof that they are truly Old Blood. Not for years has the vendetta against us burned so hot.”

“Late last night…after you had finished with the Forged ones. Another attacked you. I could not sense who, only that your wolf defended you, and that he somehow went…somewhere. That he threw his strength into a channel I did not understand, nor could follow. I know no more than that he, and you, were victorious. What was that thing?”

“You fought what they call the Skill. Didn’t you?” His eyes locked with mine. When I did not answer, he went on anyway. “There are many of us who would like to know how it was done. In our past, Skilled ones have hunted us down as if we were vermin. No one of the Old Blood can say that his family has not suffered at their hands. Now those days have come again. If there is a way to use the talents of the Old Blood against those who wield the Farseer’s Skill, it is knowledge worth much to us.”

“I cannot teach you what I do not fully understand myself.” I refrained from mentioning that I myself carried that despised Farseer blood. I was sure now of what I had only suspected before. The Wit could be used to attack a Skilled one only if a Skill channel had been opened between them. Even if I had been able to describe what Nighteyes and I had done, no one else would have been able to copy it. To fight the Skill with the Wit, one had to possess both the Skill and the Wit.

“A tower seldom crumbles from the bottom up,” she told more than one, and claimed to have the saying from Prince Chivalry.

I hate that you are injured because of me. It’s not right. This isn’t the sort of life a wolf should lead. You should not be alone, wandering from place to place. You should be with a pack, hunting your territory, perhaps taking a mate someday. Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won’t. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can’t eat the meat until you’ve killed it. Besides, I am not alone. We are together.