Assassin's Quest (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  ‘There was no time to pick and choose. I gave him what I had to hand. I didn’t know he’d go mad on car­ris seed.’

  ‘You could have re­fused him,’ Burrich said quietly.

  ‘It wouldn’t have stopped him. He’d have gone as he was, ex­hausted, and been killed right there.’

  I went and sat down on the hearth. Burrich was not watch­ing me. I lay down, then rolled over on my back and stretched. It felt good. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the fire on my flank.

  ‘Get up and sit on the stool, Fitz,’ Burrich said.

  I sighed, but I obeyed. Chade did not look at me. Burrich re­sumed talk­ing.

  ‘I’d like to keep him on an even keel. I think he just needs time, to do it on his own. He re­mem­bers. Some­times. And then he fights it off. I don’t think he wants to re­mem­ber, Chade. I don’t think he really wants to go back to be­ing FitzChiv­alry. Maybe he liked be­ing a wolf. Maybe he liked it so much he’s never com­ing back.’

  ‘He has to come back,’ Chade said quietly. ‘We need him.’

  Burrich sat up. He’d had his feet up on the wood pile, but now he set them on the floor. He leaned to­ward Chade. ‘You’ve had word?’

  ‘Not I. But Pa­tience has, I think. It’s very frus­trat­ing, some­times, to be the rat be­hind the wall.’

  ‘So what did you hear?’

  ‘Only Pa­tience and Lacey, talk­ing about wool.’

  ‘Why is that im­port­ant?’

  ‘They wanted wool to weave a very soft cloth. For a baby, or a small child. “It will be born at the end of our har­vest, but that’s the be­gin­ning of winter in the Moun­tains. So let us make it thick,” Pa­tience said. Per­haps for Kettricken’s child.’

  Burrich looked startled. ‘Pa­tience knows about Kettricken?’

  Chade laughed. ‘I don’t know. Who knows what that wo­man knows? She has changed much of late. She gath­ers the Buck­keep guard into the palm of her hand, and Lord Bright does not even see it hap­pen­ing. I think now that we should have let her know our plan, in­cluded her from the be­gin­ning. But per­haps not.’

  ‘It might have been easier for me if we had.’ Burrich stared deep into the fire.

  Chade shook his head. ‘I am sorry. She had to be­lieve you had aban­doned Fitz, re­jec­ted him for his use of the Wit. If you had gone after his body, Regal might have been sus­pi­cious. We had to make Regal be­lieve she was the only one who cared enough to bury him.’

  ‘She hates me now. She told me I had no loy­alty, nor cour­age.’ Burrich looked at his hands and his voice tightened. ‘I knew she had stopped lov­ing me years ago. When she gave her heart to Chiv­alry. I could ac­cept that. He was a man worthy of her. And I had walked away from her first. So I could live with her not lov­ing me, be­cause I felt she still re­spec­ted me as a man. But now, she des­pises me. I …’ He shook his head, then closed his eyes tightly. For a mo­ment all was still. Then Burrich straightened him­self slowly and turned to Chade. His voice was calm as he asked, ‘So, you think Pa­tience knows that Kettricken fled to the Moun­tains?’

  ‘It wouldn’t sur­prise me. There has been no of­fi­cial word, of course. Regal has sent mes­sages to King Eyod, de­mand­ing to know if Kettricken fled there, but Eyod replied only that she was the Six Duch­ies Queen and what she did was not a Moun­tain con­cern. Regal was angered enough by that to cut off trade to the Moun­tains. But Pa­tience seems to know much of what goes on out­side the keep. Per­haps she knows what is hap­pen­ing in the Moun­tain King­dom. For my part, I should dearly love to know how she in­tends to send the blanket to the Moun­tains. It’s a long and weary way.’

  For a long time, Burrich was si­lent. Then he said, ‘I should have found a way to go with Kettricken and the Fool. But there were only the two horses, and only sup­plies enough for two. I hadn’t been able to get more than that. And so they went alone.’ He glared into the fire, then asked, ‘I don’t sup­pose any­one has heard any­thing of King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity?’

  Chade shook his head slowly. ‘King Ver­ity,’ he re­minded Burrich softly. ‘If he were here.’ He looked far away. ‘If he were com­ing back, I think he’d be here by now,’ he said quietly. ‘A few more soft days like this, and there will be Red Ship Raid­ers in every bay. I no longer be­lieve Ver­ity is com­ing back.’

  ‘Then Regal truly is King,’ Burrich said sourly. ‘At least un­til Kettricken’s child is born and comes of age. And then we can look for­ward to a civil war if the child tries to claim the crown. If there is still a Six Duch­ies left to be ruled. Ver­ity. I wish now that he had not gone quest­ing for the Eld­er­lings. At least while he was alive, we had some pro­tec­tion from the Raid­ers. Now, with Ver­ity gone and spring get­ting stronger, noth­ing stands between us and the Red Ships …’

  Ver­ity. I shivered with the cold. I pushed the cold away. It came back and I pushed it all away. I held it away. After a mo­ment, I took a deep breath.

  ‘Just the wa­ter, then?’ Chade asked Burrich, and I knew they had been talk­ing but I had not been hear­ing.

  Burrich shrugged. ‘Go ahead. What can it hurt? Did he use to scry things in wa­ter?’

  ‘I never tried him. I al­ways sus­pec­ted he could if he tried. He has the Wit and the Skill. Why shouldn’t he be able to scry as well?’

  ‘Just be­cause a man can do a thing does not mean he should do a thing.’

  For a time, they looked at one an­other. Then Chade shrugged. ‘Per­haps my trade does not al­low me so many niceties of con­sci­ence as yours,’ he sug­ges­ted in a stiff voice.

  After a mo­ment, Burrich said gruffly, ‘Your par­don, sir. We all served our king as our abil­it­ies dic­tated.’

  Chade nod­ded to that. Then he smiled.

  Chade cleared the table of everything but the dish of wa­ter and some candles. ‘Come here,’ he said to me softly, so I went back to the table. He sat me in his chair and put the dish in front of me. ‘Look in the wa­ter,’ he told me. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  I saw the wa­ter in the bowl. I saw the blue in the bot­tom of the bowl. Neither an­swer made him happy. He kept telling me to look again but I kept see­ing the same things. He moved the candle sev­eral times, each time telling me to look again. Fi­nally he said to Burrich, ‘Well, at least he an­swers when you speak to him now.’

  Burrich nod­ded, but he looked dis­cour­aged. ‘Yes. Per­haps with time,’ he said.

  I knew they were fin­ished with me then, and I re­laxed.

  Chade asked if he could stay the night with us. Burrich said of course. Then he went and fetched the brandy. He poured two cups. Chade drew my stool to the table and sat again. I sat and waited, but they began talk­ing to one an­other again.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked at last.

  They stopped talk­ing and looked at me. ‘What about you?’ Burrich asked.

  ‘Don’t I get any brandy?’

  They looked at me. Burrich asked care­fully, ‘Do you want some? I didn’t think you liked it.’

  ‘No, I don’t like it. I never liked it.’ I thought for a mo­ment. ‘But it was cheap.’

  Burrich stared at me. Chade smiled a small smile, look­ing down at his hands. Then Burrich got an­other cup and poured some for me. For a time they sat watch­ing me, but I didn’t do any­thing. Even­tu­ally they began talk­ing again. I took a sip of the brandy. It still stung my mouth and nose, but it made a warmth in­side me. I knew I didn’t want any more. Then I thought I did. I drank some more. It was just as un­pleas­ant. Like some­thing Pa­tience would force on me for a cough. No. I pushed that memory aside as well. I set the cup down.

  Burrich did not look at me. He went on talk­ing to Chade. ‘When you hunt a deer, you can of­ten get much closer to it simply by pre­tend­ing not to see it. They will hold po­s­i­tion and watch you ap­proach and not stir a hoof as long as you do not look dir­ec­tly at them.’ He picked up the bottle and poured more brand
y in my cup. I snorted at the rising scent of it. I thought I felt some­thing stir­ring. A thought in my mind. I reached for my wolf.

  Nighteyes?

  My brother? I sleep, Changer. It is not yet a good time to hunt.

  Burrich glared at me. I stopped.

  I knew I did not want more brandy. But someone else thought that I did. Someone else urged me to pick up the cup, just to hold it. I swirled it in the cup. Ver­ity used to swirl his wine in the cup and look into it. I looked into the dark cup.

  Fitz.

  I set the cup down. I got up and walked around the room. I wanted to go out, but Burrich never let me go out alone, and not at all at night. So I walked around the room un­til I came back to my chair. I sat down in it again. The cup of brandy was still there. After a time I picked it up, just to make the feel­ing of want­ing to pick it up go away. But once I held it in my hand, he changed it. He made me think about drink­ing it. How warm it felt in my belly. Just drink it quick, and the taste wouldn’t last long, just the warm, good feel­ing in my belly.

  I knew what he was do­ing. I was be­gin­ning to get angry.

  Just an­other small sip then. Sooth­ingly. Whis­pery. Just to help you re­lax, Fitz. The fire is so warm, you’ve had food. Burrich will pro­tect you. Chade is right there. You needn’t be on guard so much. Just an­other sip. One more sip.

  No.

  A tiny sip, then, just get­ting your mouth wet.

  I took an­other sip to make him stop mak­ing me want to. But he didn’t stop, so I took an­other. I took a mouth­ful and swal­lowed it. It was get­ting harder and harder to res­ist. He was wear­ing me down. And Burrich kept put­ting more in my cup.

  Fitz. Say, ‘Ver­ity’s alive’. That’s all. Say just that.

  No.

  Doesn’t the brandy feel nice in your belly? So warm. Take a little more.

  ‘I know what you’re try­ing to do. You’re try­ing to get me drunk. So I can’t keep you out. I won’t let you.’ My face was wet.

  Burrich and Chade were both look­ing at me. ‘He was never a cry­ing drunk be­fore,’ Burrich ob­served. ‘At least, not around me.’ They seemed to find that in­ter­est­ing.

  Say it. Say, ‘Ver­ity’s alive’. Then I’ll let you go. I prom­ise. Just say it. Just once. Even as a whis­per. Say it. Say it.

  I looked down at the table. Very softly, I said, ‘Ver­ity’s alive.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Burrich. He was too cas­ual. He leaned too quickly to tip more brandy into my cup. The bottle was empty. He gave to me from his own cup.

  Sud­denly I wanted it. I wanted it for my­self. I picked it up and drank it all off. Then I stood up. ‘Ver­ity’s alive,’ I said. ‘He’s cold, but he’s alive. And that’s all I have to say.’ I went to the door and worked the latch and went out into the night. They didn’t try to stop me.

  Burrich was right. All of it was there, like a song one has heard too of­ten and can­not get out of one’s mind. It ran be­hind all my thoughts and col­oured all my dreams. It came push­ing back at me and gave me no peace. Spring ven­tured into sum­mer. Old memor­ies began to over­lay my new ones. My lives began stitch­ing them­selves to­gether. There were gaps and puck­ers in the join­ing, but it was get­ting harder and harder to re­fuse to know things. Names took on mean­ings and faces again. Pa­tience, Lacey, Celer­ity, and Sooty were no longer simple words but rang as rich as chim­ing bells with memor­ies and emo­tions. ‘Molly,’ I fi­nally said out loud to my­self one day. Burrich looked up at me sud­denly when I spoke that word, and nearly lost his grip on the fine plaited gut snare line he was mak­ing. I heard him catch his breath as if he would speak to me, but in­stead he kept si­lent, wait­ing for me to say more. I did not. In­stead I closed my eyes and lowered my face into my hands and longed for ob­li­vion.

  I spent a lot of time stand­ing at the win­dow look­ing out over the meadow. There was noth­ing to see there. But Burrich did not stop me or make me go back to my chores as he once would have. One day, as I looked over the rich grass, I asked Burrich, ‘What are we go­ing to do when the shep­herds get here? Where will we go to live then?’

  ‘Think about it.’ He had pegged a rab­bit hide to the floor and was scrap­ing it clean of flesh and fat. ‘They won’t be com­ing. There are no flocks to bring up to sum­mer pas­ture. Most of the good stock went in­land with Regal. He plundered Buck­keep of everything he could cart or drive off. I’m will­ing to bet that any sheep he left in Buck­keep turned into mut­ton over the winter.’

  ‘Prob­ably,’ I agreed. And then some­thing pressed into my mind, some­thing more ter­rible than all the things I knew and did not want to re­mem­ber. It was all the things I did not know, all the ques­tions that had been left un­answered. I went out to walk on the meadow. I went past the meadow, to the edge of the stream, and then down it, to the boggy part where the cat­tails grew. I gathered the green cat­tail spikes to cook with the por­ridge. Once more, I knew all the names of the plants. I did not want to, but I knew which ones would kill a man, and how to pre­pare them. All the old know­ledge was there, wait­ing to re­claim me whether I would or no.

  When I came back in with the spikes, he was cook­ing the grain. I set them on the table and got a pot of wa­ter from the bar­rel. As I rinsed them off and picked them over, I fi­nally asked, ‘What happened? That night?’

  He turned very slowly to look at me, as if I were game that might be spooked off by sud­den move­ment. ‘That night?’

  ‘The night King Shrewd and Kettricken were to es­cape. Why didn’t you have the scrub horses and the lit­ter wait­ing?’

  ‘Oh. That night.’ He sighed out as if re­call­ing old pain. He spoke very slowly and calmly, as if fear­ing to startle me. ‘They were watch­ing us, Fitz. All the time. Regal knew everything. I couldn’t have smuggled an oat out of the stable that day, let alone three horses, a lit­ter and a mule. There were Far­row guards every­where, try­ing to look as if they had just come down to in­spect the empty stalls. I dared not go to you to tell you. So, in the end, I waited un­til the feast­ing had be­gun, un­til Regal had crowned him­self and thought he had won. Then I slipped out and went for the only two horses I could get. Sooty and Ruddy. I’d hid­den them at the smith’s, to make sure Regal couldn’t sell them off as well. The only food I could get was what I could pil­fer from the guard-room. It was the only thing I could think to do.’

  ‘And Queen Kettricken and the Fool got away on them.’ The names fell strangely off my tongue. I did not want to think of them, to re­call them at all. When I had last seen the Fool, he had been weep­ing and ac­cus­ing me of killing his king. I had in­sis­ted he flee in the King’s place, to save his life. It was not the best part­ing memory to carry of one I had called my friend.

  ‘Yes.’ Burrich brought the pot of por­ridge to the table and set it there to thicken. ‘Chade and the wolf guided them to me. I wanted to go with them, but I couldn’t. I’d only have slowed them down. My leg … I knew I couldn’t keep up with the horses for long, and rid­ing double in that weather would have ex­hausted the horses. I had to just let them go.’ A si­lence. Then he growled, lower than a wolf’s growl, ‘If ever I found out who be­trayed us to Regal …’

  ‘I did.’

  His eyes locked on mine, a look of hor­ror and in­credu­lity on his face. I looked at my hands. They were start­ing to tremble.

  ‘I was stu­pid. It was my fault. The Queen’s little maid, Rose­mary. Al­ways about, al­ways un­der­foot. She must have been Regal’s spy. She heard me tell the Queen to be ready, that King Shrewd would be go­ing with her. She heard me tell Kettricken to dress warmly. Regal would have to guess from that that she would be flee­ing Buck­keep. He’d know she’d need horses. And per­haps she did more than spy. Per­haps she took a bas­ket of poisoned treats to an old wo­man. Per­haps she greased a stair-tread she knew her Queen would soon des­cend.’

  I forced my­self to look up from the spikes, to
meet Burrich’s stricken gaze. ‘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.’

  I shook my head, tried to rattle from it my ter­ri­fy­ing memor­ies of Will. He brought back the shad­ows of the dun­geon, the things I still re­fused to re­call. I wondered if I had killed him. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d got enough poison into him. I looked up to find Burrich watch­ing me in­tently.

  ‘That night, at the very last mo­ment, the King re­fused to go,’ I told him quietly. ‘I had thought of Regal as a traitor so long, I had for­got­ten that Shrewd would still see him as a son. 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. So then I killed Se­rene and Justin. I killed them the same way they had killed my king. Without a chance of fight­ing back, without a mo­ment of mercy.’