Royal Assassin (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  I think our war­ri­ors let up a bit when they knew we had re­duced their crew to where they could no longer man­age their ves­sel. It was a mis­take. One of the Raid­ers set fire to their own sail while a second one at­temp­ted to chop through their own plank­ing. I guess they hoped the fire would spread and they could take us down with them. Cer­tainly at the end they fought with no care for the dam­age they took to their ship or their own bod­ies. Our fight­ers fi­nally fin­ished them, and we got the fire put out, but the prize we towed back to Buck­keep was smoking and dam­aged, and man for man, we had lost more lives than they had. Still, it was a vic­tory, we told ourselves. This time, when the oth­ers went out drink­ing, I had the sense to seek out Molly. And early the next morn­ing, I found an hour or two for Nighteyes. We went hunt­ing to­gether, good clean hunt­ing, and he tried to per­suade me to run away with him. I made the mis­take of telling him that he could leave if he wished, mean­ing only the best for him, and hurt his feel­ings. It took me an­other hour to con­vey to him what I had meant. I went back to my ship won­der­ing if my ties were worth the ef­fort it took to keep them in­tact. Nighteyes as­sured me they were.

  That was the last clear vic­tory for the Rurisk. It was far from the last battle of the sum­mer. No, the clear, pleas­ant weather stretched im­possibly long be­fore us, and every fine day was a day when I might kill someone. I tried not to count them as days on which I might be killed. We had many skir­mishes, and gave pur­suit many times, and it did seem there were fewer raids at­temp­ted in the area we reg­u­larly patrolled. Some­how that only made it all the more frus­trat­ing. And there were suc­cess­ful raids for the Red Ships, times when we put into a town but an hour or so after they had left, and could do no more than help stack bod­ies or put out fires. Then Ver­ity would roar and curse in my mind that he could not get mes­sages more swiftly, that there were not enough ships and watches to be every­where. I would rather have faced the fury of a battle than Ver­ity’s sav­age frus­tra­tion rack­ing through my brain. There was never any end in sight, save the res­pite that bad weather might bring us. We could not even put an ac­cur­ate num­ber to the Red Ships that plagued us, for they were painted identic­ally, and as like as peas in a pod. Or drops of blood on the sand.

  While I was an oars­man on the Rurisk that sum­mer, we had one other en­counter with a Red Ship that is worth telling for the strange­ness of it. On a clear sum­mer night, we had been tumbled from our beds in the crew-shed and sent ra­cing to­ward our ship. Ver­ity had sensed a Red Ship lurk­ing off Buck Point. He wanted us to over­take it in the dark.

  Justin stood in our prow, Skill linked to Se­rene in Ver­ity’s tower. Ver­ity was a word­less mumble in my mind as he felt our way through the dark to­ward the ship he sensed. And some­thing else? I could feel him grop­ing out, bey­ond the Red Ship, like a man feel­ing for­ward in the dark­ness. I sensed his un­eas­i­ness. We were al­lowed no talk, and our oars were muffled as we came closer. Nighteyes whispered to me that he had scent of them, and then we spot­ted them. Long and low and dark, the Red Ship was cut­ting through the wa­ter ahead of us. A sud­den cry went up from their deck; they had seen us. Our mas­ter shouted to us to lay into our oars, but as we did, a sick wave of fear en­gulfed me. My heart began to ham­mer, my hands to tremble. The ter­ror that swept through me was a child’s name­less fear of things lurk­ing in the dark, a help­less fear. I gripped my oar but could find no strength to ply it.

  ‘Kor­rikska,’ I heard a man groan in a thick Outis­lander ac­cent. I think it was Nonge. I be­came aware I was not the only one un­manned. There was no steady beat to our oars. Some sat on their sea-chests, head bowed over their oars, while oth­ers rowed frantic­ally, but out of rhythm, the blades of the oars skip­ping and slap­ping against the wa­ter. We skittered on the sur­face like a crippled pond-skater while the Red Ship forged pur­pose­fully to­ward us. I lif­ted up my eyes and watched my death com­ing for me. The blood hammered so in my ears that I could not hear the cries of the panic-stricken men and wo­men about me. I could not even take a breath. I lif­ted up my eyes to the heav­ens.

  Bey­ond the Red Ship, al­most glow­ing on the black wa­ter, was a white ship. This was no raid­ing ves­sel; this was a ship, eas­ily three times the size of the Red Ship, her two sails reefed, rid­ing at an­chor on the quiet wa­ter. Ghosts strode her deck, or Forged ones. I felt no hint of life from them, and yet they moved pur­pose­fully, ready­ing a small boat to be lowered over the side. A man stood on the af­ter­deck. The mo­ment I saw him, I could not look away.

  He was cloaked in grey, yet I saw him limned against the dark sky as clearly as if a lan­tern il­lu­min­ated him. I swear I could see his eyes, the jut of his nose, the dark curly beard that framed his mouth. He laughed at me. ‘Here’s one come to us!’ he called out to someone, and lif­ted a hand. He poin­ted it at me, and laughed aloud again, and I felt my heart squeeze in my chest. He looked at me with a ter­rible single­ness, as if I alone of our crew were his prey. I looked back at him, and I saw him, but I could not sense him. There! There! I shrieked the word aloud, or per­haps the Skill I could never con­trol sent it bound­ing off the in­sides of my skull. There was no re­sponse. No Ver­ity, no Nighteyes, no one, noth­ing. I was alone. All the world had gone si­lent and still. Around me my crew fel­lows rattled with ter­ror and cried out aloud, but I felt noth­ing. They were no longer there. No one was there. No gull, no fish in the sea, no life any­where as far as any of my in­ner senses would reach. The cloaked fig­ure on the ship leaned far out on the rail, the ac­cus­ing fin­ger point­ing at me. He was laugh­ing. I was alone. It was a loneli­ness too great to be en­dured. It wrapped me, coiled about me, blanketed me and began to smother me.

  I re­pelled at it.

  In a re­flex I did not know I had, I used the Wit to push away from it as hard as I could. Phys­ic­ally, I was the one that flew back­wards, land­ing in the bilge upon the thwarts, tangled in the feet of the other oars­men. I saw the fig­ure on the ship stumble, sag and then fall over the side. The splash was not large, but there was only one. If he rose to the sur­face at all, I did not see it.

  Nor was there time to look for him. The Red Ship hit us amid­ships, shat­ter­ing oars and send­ing oars­men fly­ing. The Outis­landers were shout­ing with their con­fid­ence, mock­ing us with their laughter as they leaped from their ship to ours. I scrabbled to my feet and lunged to my bench, reach­ing for my axe. Around me, the oth­ers were mak­ing the same sort of re­cov­ery. We were not battle-ready, but neither were we para­lysed by fear any more. Steel met our boarders and battle was joined.

  There is no place so dark as the open wa­ter at night. Fel­low and foe were in­dis­tin­guish­able in the dark. A man leaped onto me, I caught at the leather of his for­eign har­ness, bore him down and strangled him. After the numb­ness that had briefly clenched me, there was a sav­age re­lief in his ter­ror beat­ing against me. I think it happened quickly. When I straightened up, the other boat was pulling away from us. She had only about half her oars­men, and there was still fight­ing on our decks, but she was leav­ing her men. Our mas­ter was shout­ing at us to fin­ish them and be after the Red Ship. It was a use­less com­mand. By the time we had killed them and thrown them off our decks, the other ship was lost in the dark­ness. Justin was down, throttled and battered, alive, but in­cap­able of Skilling to Ver­ity just then. In any case, one bank of our oars was a splintered mess. Our mas­ter cursed us all soundly as the oars were re­dis­trib­uted and shipped, but it was too late. He shouted us down to still­ness, but we could hear noth­ing, and see noth­ing. I stood on my sea-chest and turned slowly in a com­plete circle. Empty black wa­ter. Of the oared ves­sel, no sign. But even more strange to me was what I spoke aloud, ‘The white ship was at an­chor. But she’s gone, too!’

  Around me, heads turned to stare at me. ‘White ship?’

  ‘Are you all right, Fitz?’
r />   ‘A Red Ship, boy, it was a Red Ship we fought.’

  ‘Speak not of a white ship. To see a white ship is to see your own death. Bad luck.’ This last was hissed to me by Nonge. I opened my mouth to ob­ject that I had seen an ac­tual ship, not some vis­ion of dis­aster. He shook his head at me, and then turned away to stare out over the empty wa­ter. I closed my mouth and sat down slowly. No one else had seen it. Nor did any of the oth­ers speak of the ter­rible fear that had gripped us and changed our battle plans to panic. When we got back to town that night, the way it was told in the tav­erns was that we had come upon the ship, en­gaged battle, only to have the Red Ship flee us. No evid­ence re­mained of that en­counter but some shattered oars, some in­jur­ies, and some Outis­lander blood on our decks.

  When I privately con­ferred with both Ver­ity and Nighteyes, neither had seen any­thing. Ver­ity told me that I had ex­cluded him as soon as we sighted the other ves­sel. Nighteyes was miffed to ad­mit that I had com­pletely closed my­self to him as well. Nonge would say noth­ing to me of white ships; he was not much for con­ver­sa­tion on any topic. Later, I found men­tion of the white ship in a scroll of old le­gends. There it was an ac­cursed ship, where the souls of drowned sail­ors un­worthy of the sea would work forever for a mer­ci­less mas­ter. I was forced to set aside all men­tion of it or be thought mad.

  The rest of the sum­mer, the Red Ships evaded the Rurisk. We would catch sight of them, and give chase, but never man­aged to run one down. Once it was our good for­tune to chase one that had just raided. She threw her cap­tives over­board to lighten her­self and fled us. Of twelve folk they threw in, we res­cued nine, and re­turned them un­Forged to their vil­lage. The three who drowned be­fore we reached them were mourned, but all agreed it was a bet­ter fate than For­ging.

  The other ships had much the same luck. The Con­stance came upon Raid­ers in the midst of at­tack­ing a vil­lage. They didn’t man­age a quick vic­tory, but had the foresight to dam­age the beached Red Ship so that the Raid­ers could not make a clean es­cape. It took days to hunt them all down, for they scattered into the wood­lands when they saw what had been done to their ship. The other ves­sels had sim­ilar ex­per­i­ences: we gave chase, we drove off Raid­ers, the other ships even had some few suc­cesses at sink­ing raid­ing ves­sels, but we cap­tured no more in­tact ships that sum­mer.

  So, the For­gings were re­duced, and each time we sent a ship down, we told ourselves it was one less. But it never seemed to make a dif­fer­ence in how many re­mained. In one sense, we brought hope to the folk of Six Duch­ies. In an­other way, we gave them des­pair, for des­pite all we did, we could not drive the threat of Raid­ers from our shore.

  For me, that long sum­mer was a time of ter­rible isol­a­tion and in­cred­ible close­ness. Ver­ity was of­ten with me, yet I found I could never seem to sus­tain the con­tact once any sort of fight­ing had be­gun. Ver­ity him­self was aware of the mael­strom of emo­tions that threatened to over­whelm me each time our crew en­gaged. He ven­tured the the­ory that in at­tempt­ing to de­fend against the thoughts and feel­ings of oth­ers, I set up my bound­ar­ies so firmly that not even he could breach them. He also sug­ges­ted that this might mean I was strong in the Skill, stronger than he was even, but so sens­it­ized that to let down my bar­ri­ers dur­ing a battle drowned me in the con­scious­ness of every­one around me. It was an in­ter­est­ing the­ory, but one that offered no prac­tical solu­tions to the prob­lem. Still, in the days when I car­ried Ver­ity about, I de­veloped a feel for him that I had for no other man, save per­haps Burrich. With chilling fa­mili­ar­ity, I knew how the Skill hun­ger gnawed at him.

  When I was a boy, Kerry and I had one day climbed a tall cliff over the ocean. When we reached the top and looked out over it, he con­fessed to me an al­most over­whelm­ing im­pulse to fling him­self off. I think this was akin to what Ver­ity felt. The pleas­ure of the Skill en­ticed him, and he longed to fling all of him­self, every ounce of his be­ing, out into its web. His close con­tact with me only fed it. And yet we did too much good for the Six Duch­ies for him to give it up, even though the Skill was eat­ing him hol­low. Per­force I shared with him many of his hours at his lonely tower win­dow, the hard chair where he sat, the wear­i­ness that des­troyed his ap­pet­ite for food, even the deep bone-aches of in­activ­ity. I wit­nessed how he wasted away.

  I do not know that it is good to know someone so well. Nighteyes was jeal­ous, and said so plainly. At least with him it was an open an­ger about be­ing slighted, as he saw it. It was a more dif­fi­cult thing with Molly.

  She could see no real reason why I had to be away so much. Why did I, of all people, have to crew on one of the war­ships? The reason I was able to give her, that Ver­ity wished me to, sat­is­fied her not at all. Our brief times to­gether began to have a pre­dict­able pat­tern. We would come to­gether in a storm of pas­sion, find peace in each other briefly, and then be­gin to wrangle about things. She was lonely, she hated be­ing a ser­vant, the little bit of money she could set aside for her­self grew ter­ribly slowly, she missed me, why did I have to be gone so much when I was the only thing that made her life bear­able? I ap­proached her once with the of­fer of what money I had earned aboard the ship, but she stiffened as if I had called her a whore. She would take noth­ing of mine un­til we were joined in mar­riage be­fore all. And I could of­fer her no real hope as to when that might hap­pen. I still had never found the mo­ment in which to re­veal Shrewd’s plans for Celer­ity and me. We were apart so much, we lost the threads of one an­other’s day-to-day lives, and when we did come to­gether, we al­ways re­chewed the bit­ter rinds of the same ar­gu­ments.

  One night, when I came to her, I found her with her hair bound back all in red rib­bons, and grace­ful sil­ver ear­rings shaped like wil­low leaves dangling against her bare neck. Clad in her simple white night­gown, the sight of her took my breath away. Later, dur­ing a quieter mo­ment when we had breath for speak­ing, I com­pli­men­ted her on the ear­rings. Art­lessly, she told me that when Prince Regal had last come to buy candles of her, he had gif­ted her with them, for he said he was so pleased with what she cre­ated that he scarcely felt he paid her what such finely-scen­ted candles were worth. She smiled proudly as she told me this, her fin­gers toy­ing with my war­rior’s queue while her own hair and rib­bons tangled wildly upon the pil­lows. I do not know what she saw in my face, but it widened her eyes and she drew back from me.

  ‘You will take gifts from Regal?’ I asked her coldly. ‘You will not ac­cept from me coin that I had hon­estly earned, but you take jew­ellery from that …’

  I teetered on the edge of treason, but could find no word to ex­press what I thought of him.

  Molly’s eyes nar­rowed, and it was my turn to draw back. ‘What should I have said to him? “No, sir, I can­not ac­cept your lar­gesse, un­til you marry me?” There is not between Regal and me what there is between us. This was a per­quis­ite from a cus­tomer, such as is of­ten given to a skilled crafts­man. Why did you think he gave them to me? In ex­change for my fa­vours?’

  We stared at one an­other, and after a time I man­aged to speak what she was al­most will­ing to ac­cept as an apo­logy. But then I made the mis­take of sug­gest­ing that per­haps he had given them to her solely be­cause he knew it would vex me. And then she wanted to know how Regal might know what was between us, and did I think her work so poor that lar­gesse such as the ear­rings was not due her? Suf­fice to say that we men­ded our quar­rels as well as we could in the short time we had left to­gether. But a men­ded pot is never as sound as a whole one, and I re­turned to the ship as lonely as if I had had no time at all with her.

  In the times when I leaned on my oar and kept per­fect rhythm and tried to think of noth­ing at all, I of­ten found my­self miss­ing Pa­tience and Lacey, Chade, Kettricken, or even Burrich. The few times I was able to call
on our Queen-in-Wait­ing that sum­mer, I al­ways found her on her tower-top garden. It was a beau­ti­ful place, but des­pite her ef­forts, it was noth­ing like the other Buck­keep gar­dens had ever been. There was too much of the moun­tains in her for her to ever con­vert en­tirely to our ways. There was a honed sim­pli­city to how she ar­ranged and trained the plants. Simple stones had been ad­ded, and bare drift­wood branches, twis­ted and smoothed by the sea, res­ted against them in stark beauty. I could have med­it­ated calmly there, but it was not a place to loll in the warm wind of sum­mer, and I sus­pec­ted that was how Ver­ity had re­called it. She kept her­self busy there, and en­joyed it, but it did not bond her to Ver­ity as she had once be­lieved it would. She was as beau­ti­ful as ever, but al­ways her blue eyes were clouded grey with pre­oc­cu­pa­tion and worry. Her brow was fur­rowed so of­ten that when she did re­lax her face, one saw the pale lines of the skin the sun had never reached. In the times I spent with her there, she of­ten dis­missed most of her ladies, and then quizzed me about the Rurisk’s activ­it­ies as thor­oughly as if she were Ver­ity him­self. When I had fin­ished re­port­ing to her, of­ten she fol­ded her lips into a firm line and went to stare out over the top of the tower wall and bey­ond to the sea touch­ing the edge of the sky. To­wards the end of sum­mer, as she was star­ing so one af­ter­noon, I ven­tured close to her to ask to be ex­cused from her pres­ence to re­turn to my ship. She scarcely seemed to hear what I had asked. In­stead, she said softly, ‘There has to be a fi­nal solu­tion. Noth­ing, no one can go on like this. There must be a way to make an end of this.’