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

by Robin Hobb

One does not have to be Witted to know the companionship of a beast, and to know that the friendship of an animal is every bit as rich and complicated as that of a man or woman. Nosy had been a friendly, inquisitive, boyish dog when he was mine. Smithy had been tough and aggressive, inclined to bully anyone who would give way to him, and his sense of humor had had a rough edge to it. Nighteyes was as unlike them as he was unlike Burrich or Chade. It is no disrespect to any of them to say I was closest to him.

This was where Regal had spent the summers of his childhood. Always he had disdained Buckkeep Town as little better than a backward village. I tried to imagine a boy leaving all this in fall, to return to a drafty castle on a rainswept and storm-battered sea cliff above a grubby little port town. No wonder he had removed himself and his court here as soon as he could. I suddenly felt an inkling of understanding for Regal. It made me angry. It is good to know well a man you are going to kill; it is not good to understand him. I recalled how he had killed his own father, my king, and steeled myself to my purpose.

This, indeed, I suddenly felt, was how a king should live. Amid art and music and graciousness, elevating the lives of his people by providing a place for such things to flourish. I glimpsed my own ignorance, and worse, the ugliness of a man trained only to kill others. I felt a sudden anger, too, at all I had never been taught, never even glimpsed. Had not Regal and his mother had a hand in that as well, in keeping the Bastard in his place? I had been honed as an ugly, functional tool, just as craggy, barren Buckkeep was a fort, not a palace.

If Buckkeep ever fell to the Raiders, these broad rivers would become high roads for their shallow-draft vessels. They would plunge like a dagger into this soft underbelly of the Six Duchies. These indolent nobles and cocky farm lads would waken to screams and smoke in the night, with no castle to run to, no guards to stand and fight for them. Before they died, they might come to know what others had endured to keep them safe. Before they died, they might rail against a king who had fled those ramparts to come inland and hide himself in pleasures. But I intended that king would die first.

Angered, he would expend all of his Skill-strength in one effort, with no thought to what might befall him afterward. I felt Will hesitate, then plunge into that Skilling, reaching after Verity and trying to leech onto him. Study this revelation, you nest of adders! My king let forth his wrath. Verity’s Skilling was a blast, of a strength I had never encountered anywhere.

My meal that day consisted of rice-lily roots and some nuts a squirrel had hoarded in too obvious a hiding place. I would gladly have eaten the squirrel, who sat overhead scolding at me as I raided his cache, but I had not the means to make that wish a reality.

I had believed myself a self-sufficient and clever fellow. I had taken pride in my skills as an assassin, had even, deep down, believed that although I could not competently master my Skill ability, my strength at it was easily the equal of any in Galen’s Coterie. But take away both King Shrewd’s largesse and my wolf companion’s hunting ability, subtract from me Chade’s secret information and plotting skill and Verity’s Skill-guidance, and what I saw left was a starving man in stolen clothes, halfway between Buckkeep and the Mountains, with small prospect of getting any closer to either one.

Creece offered me some dried meat, a drink of the most appalling wine I’d ever tasted, and a great deal of gossip. He was a talker, one of those men who take the most extreme stance on any topic and have not conversations but arguments with their fellows.

I wondered if anyone, anywhere, got to live the life he’d wanted. Perhaps Nighteyes finally had. I truly hoped so. I wished him well, but was selfish enough to hope that sometimes he’d miss me.

I slept just outside the sheep pen, on guard lest any predators come near, but Creece wandered off to annoy the puppeteers with his dour nature and extensive opinions.

Instead my mind reeled suddenly, reordering every word she had said to me when we had parted, recalling the day when she had asked me what I would do if she had been carrying my child. The baby was the one she had spoken of, the one she had left me for, the one she would put ahead of every other in her life. Not another man. Our child. She’d left to protect our child. And she hadn’t told me because she was afraid I wouldn’t go with her. Better not to ask than to ask and be refused. And she had been right. I wouldn’t have gone.

“She’s fine,” Burrich said softly. “She’s fine. And as beautiful as she is, what would she have to cry about?” He was silent for a long time, a man transfixed.

slowly my thoughts took shape, and I understood the previous Skill dreams I’d had of Burrich. It explained much. I’d been seeing him through Molly’s eyes. He’d been there, all this time, with Molly, taking care of her. She was the friend he’d gone to help, the woman who could use a man’s strength for a bit. He’d been there with her, while I had been alone.

Only the small insistent voice in my mind, battering at me. Come to me, come to me, come to me. And I could not do otherwise. I could not tell my heart to stop beating, I could not cease breathing and die. And I could not ignore that summoning. I stood alone in the night, trapped and suffocating in another man’s will for me.

And to take it back a generation, that was how it had been for Galen, forced to be so fanatically loyal to my father. Verity had told me that his loyalty was a Skill-imprinting, done by Chivalry when they were all little more than boys. Done in anger against some cruelty Galen had wrought against Verity. The act of an older brother taking revenge on someone who had been mean to his little brother. It had been done to Galen in anger and ignorance, not even knowing fully that such a thing was possible.

Had Galen ever awakened to what had been done to him? Did that account for his fanatical hatred of me, had it been a passing down to the son of the anger he could not allow himself to feel toward Chivalry, my father?

I stopped thinking. For the next few days, I did what I was told. I did it well and thoroughly, distracted by no thoughts of my own. Somewhere inside me, a madman raged in his cell, but I chose not to know of that.

One day I caught myself wondering if Molly would teach her to make candles and tend bees. What could I teach her? Poisons and strangling techniques, I thought bitterly. No. Her letters and numbers she’d learn from me. She’d still be young enough when I returned for me to teach her that. And all Burrich had ever taught me about horses and dogs. That was the day when I realized I was looking ahead again, was planning for a life after I’d found Verity and somehow taken him safely back to Buck. My baby was just an infant now,

I looked forward to a life, and imagined teaching her things, imagined her growing up bright and pretty and loving her father, knowing nothing, ever, of any other life he’d ever led. She wouldn’t remember me with a smooth face and a straight nose. She’d only know me as I was now. That was oddly important to me. So I would go to Verity because I had to, because he was my king and I loved him, and because he needed me. But finding him no longer marked the end of my journey, but the beginning. Once I had found Verity, I could turn about and come home to them. For a time, I forgot Regal.

I looked at her, wanting her with all the lust of my months alone and untouched. But I knew also that for that deeper hunger for companionship and understanding, she offered me no more solace than any man might find in his own hand.

Even after the sound of his weeping became too soft to hear, even after he died, I heard it still inside my mind. Sometimes I still can. Another young life ended senselessly, to no profit, as a result of Regal’s vendetta with me. Or perhaps because of mine with him.

The cut on my arm had long healed, but the broken nose I could do little about. It, too, no longer startled me when I saw it in a mirror. In a way, I reflected, I was as much Regal’s creation now as Chade’s. Chade had only taught me how to kill; Regal had made me a true assassin.

Resting, was he? I could aid him with that. But there I found my dilemma. A few weeks ago, I would simply have slipped in and done my best to plant a knife in Regal’s chest, and damn the consequences. But now I not only had Verity’s Skill-command eating at me, but also the knowledge that if I survived, I had a woman and child awaiting me. I was no longer willing to trade my life for Regal’s. This time, I needed a plan.

Trap-trap. I froze where I was, my legs curled under the eave of the roof while I clung to the two awls sunk between the shakes. I did not even breathe. It was not Nighteyes. No. Small Ferret. Trap-trap. Go away. Trap-trap. It’s a trap? Trap-trap for Fitz-Wolf. Old Blood knows, Big Ferret said, go with, go with, warn Fitz-Wolf. Rolf-Bear knew your smell. Trap-trap. Go away.

Somehow Black Rolf had interceded for me with the Old Blood. Since I had left Tradeford, I had feared that every Witted one I encountered would be against me. But someone had sent this small creature to warn me. And he had held to his purpose, even though his bond-partner was dead.

A determination to warn me. I would never learn who Big Ferret had been, nor how he had discovered this plan nor how his bond-beast had managed to conceal himself in Will’s possessions. For that was whom he showed me waiting silently in the room below. One-Eye. The trap-trap.

How can Small Ferret kill Old Blood Hater? In an eye-blink he was at my throat. I actually felt the sharp teeth grip the vein in my throat. Snip-snip when he sleeps. Drink his blood like a coney. No more Big Ferret, no more holes, no more coneys. Only Old Blood Hater. Snip-snip. He let go of my jugular and slipped suddenly inside my shirt. Warm. His small clawed feet were icy on my skin. I had a strip of dried meat in my pocket. I lay on the roof and fed it to my fellow assassin.

“I knew it was not King Regal in that room. The rest was easy to deduce. They had come to Blue Lake too promptly following the killings of the guards. They came for you.” “Perhaps,” I conceded. I was beginning to have a high opinion of Starling’s wits.

“Actually, you stepped over him. You sank your axe into the man who had just struck him down. And waded deeper into the battle without even a glance back at him.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “That is why I sing ‘Antler Tower Raid’ slightly differently from any other minstrel. He told me of it, and I sing you as he saw you. A hero. You saved his life.”

FitzChivalry. Hero. Just words. But it was as if she had lanced something inside me, drained away some poison, and now I could heal. It was the strangest feeling. Get some sleep, I advised myself. I actually felt as if I could.

I would set you free if I could. Would you? I would not part from you. That is not what I meant. I meant I would have for you a life of your own. He yawned, then stretched. I will have for us a life of our own. We shall win it together.

Here, boy, come to heel.” I’ll chew your heel off for you, Nighteyes offered savagely, but he came, following me out into the cleared yard. “Damn big dog,” Nik observed. He leaned forward. “Looks more than half a wolf to me.” “Some in Farrow have told me that. It’s a Buck breed. We use them for herding sheep.” You will pay for this. I promise you.

You did not seem a man who would share his life with an animal.” The tone of her voice left me no doubt as to how she regarded such a habit. “Well. I do.” A tiny spark of anger made me forthright. “He’s everything to me. Everything. I have never had a truer friend, willing without question to lay his life down for mine. And more than his life. It is one thing to be willing to die for another. It is another to sacrifice the living of one’s life for another. That is what he gives me. The same sort of loyalty I give to my king.”

“I go to serve my king. To lend whatever aid I may to Kettricken and Verity’s heir-child. And then to go on, to beyond the Mountains, to find and restore my king. So he may drive the Red Ships from the Six Duchies coast and we may know peace again.”

“You could go on your way, making your way as a minstrel. You seem to do well enough at it.” “Well enough. Well enough for a traveling minstrel. You’ve heard me sing, Fitz. I’ve a good enough voice, and nimble enough fingers. But I am not extraordinary, and that is what it takes to win a position as keep minstrel. That’s assuming there will be any more keeps in five years or so. I’ve no mind to sing to a Red Ship audience.”

“Great events. The abdication of the throne by Prince Chivalry. The triumph against the Red Ships at Antler Island. Were not you the one who saved Queen Kettricken from Forged ones the night she was attacked, right before the Vixen Queen’s Hunt? Now, there’s a song I wish I had written. To say nothing of precipitating the riots the night of Prince Regal’s coronation. Let’s see. Rising from the dead, making an attempt on Regal’s life right inside Tradeford Hall, and then escaping unscathed. Killing half a dozen of his Guard single-handedly while manacled…I had a feeling I should have followed you that day.

“How many days have you been gone from her? Well, that’s how many days she has had to cope without you. Time doesn’t stop for her just because you’re gone.

She burrowed into my chest, tucking her head under my chin. She smelled nice. How did women always manage to smell nice?

We spoke less than we once had, but I felt that I was more aware of him than I had ever been before. Perhaps there was less need to speak. But we had also both changed in our time apart. When I looked at him now, I sometimes saw the wolf first and then my companion. I think you have finally begun to respect me as I deserve. There was teasing but also truth in that statement.

‘A catalyst was DarAles for his time, a changer of hearts and lives. He came not to be hero, but to enable the hero in others. He came, not to fulfill prophecies, but to open the doors to new futures. Such is ever the task of the catalyst.’ Above, he has written that it is in every one of us to be a catalyst in our own time. What do you think of that, Tom?” “I’d rather be a shepherd,” I answered her truthfully. “Catalyst” was not a word I cherished.

Eda, the mother goddess who is thanked for plentiful crops and multiplying flocks, is disdained by the OutIslanders as a goddess for a settled folk who have lost all spirit. The OutIslanders themselves worship only El, the god of the sea. He is not a deity to offer thanks to, but a god to swear by. The only blessing he sends his worshipers are storms and hardships to make them strong.

In that winter, the small folk of Buck and Bearns, Rippon and Shoaks, the fisherfolk and herders, goose-girls and pig-boys, took up the war that our wrangling nobles and scattered armies waged so poorly and made it their own. The small folk of a land can only be oppressed so long before they rise up in their own defense, be it against outlanders or an unjust lord of their own.

Watching something is never the same as doing it. I gasped as the first slashing spray of river water struck me. We were suddenly a toy in the clutches of an unpredictable child. The river rushed past us, tearing at the barge and roaring its frustration that it could not drag us free. The furious water near deafened me.

I knew guards dragged me to my feet, I knew I was walked up the hill. I paid no attention to that body. Instead, I shook myself again, and then crept under the tree. There was just room to curl myself up. I put my tail over my nose. I flicked my ears a few times to shake the last of the water from them. Go to sleep now. Everything’s fine. Go to sleep. I closed his eyes for him. He was still shivering, but I could feel a hesitant warmth creeping through him again. Gently I drew myself clear.

The only remarkable thing that happened that evening was that the meal offered meat and bread and even a mug of ale. The old man opened the door to pass me the tray. When he came to take the tray back, he left two blankets for me. I thanked him, and he looked startled. Then he shocked me by observing, “You’ve your father’s voice as well as his eyes.” Then he shut the door in my face, rather hastily.

Starling cleared her throat. “Don’t blame yourself,” she told me. “I learned long ago not to blame myself for evil done to me. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even your fault. You were just the catalyst that started the chain of events.” “Don’t call me that,” I begged her.

I turned to the wall of the ravine and started to climb. I heard the man halloo to the others, calling and whistling for them to follow him, he had a man’s tracks here, never mind the wolf, it was just a Wit-trick. In the distance the hounds suddenly took up a different yelping. In that moment, I knew that Regal had finally found what he had sought. A Witted one to hunt me. Old Blood had been bought.

Stop. My brother, do not do this. Do what? I love you. But I do not wish to be you. I hovered where I was. His lungs working so strongly, drawing in the cold night air past the hare’s head in his mouth. The slight sting of the slash down his muzzle, his powerful legs carrying his lean body so well. You do not wish to be me, either, Changer. Not really.

Without thinking, I had nearly abandoned my body for his, nearly climbed in beside him into that perfect healthy wolf’s body. I had done it once before, with his consent. But now we both knew better. We would share, but we could not become one another. Not without both of us losing.

He looked at me and grinned his old sly Fool’s smile. “You still don’t understand, do you? When word reached us that you were dead, that Regal had killed you…my life ended. It was worse, somehow, when the pilgrims began to trickle in, to hail me as the White Prophet. I knew I was the White Prophet. I’ve known it since I was a child, as did those who raised me. I grew up, knowing that someday I would come north to find you and that between the two of us we would put time in its proper course. All of my life, I knew I would do that.