by Robin Hobb
Burrich recalled my attention with a sharp poke. "And you're not to do that, either. You look an imbecile, sitting there nodding with your mind elsewhere. Don't fancy no one notices when you do that. And don't glare like that when you're corrected. Sit up straight, and put a pleasant expression on your face. Not a vacuous smile, you dolt. Ah, Fitz, what am I to do with you? How can I protect you when you invite troubles on yourself? And why do they want to take you off like this anyway?"
The last two questions, put to himself, betrayed his real concern. Perhaps I was a trifle stupid not to have seen it. He wasn't going. I was. For no good reason that he could discern. Burrich had lived long enough near court to be very cautious. For the first time since he had been entrusted with my care, I was being removed from his watchfulness. It had not been so long since my father had been buried. And so he wondered, though he didn't dare say, whether I would be coming back or if someone was making the opportunity to quietly dispose of me. I realized what a blow to his pride and reputation it would be if I were to be "vanished." So I sighed, and then carefully commented that perhaps they wanted an extra hand with the horses and dogs. Verity went nowhere without Leon, his wolfhound. Only two days before he had complimented me on how well I managed him. This I repeated to Burrich, and it was gratifying to see how well this small subterfuge worked. Relief flooded his face, then pride that he had taught me well. The topic instantly shifted from manners to the correct care of the wolfhound. If the lectures on manners had wearied me, the repetition of hound lore was almost painfully tedious. When he released me to go to my other lessons, I left with winged feet.
I went through the rest of the day in a distracted haze that had Hod threatening me with a good whipping if I didn't attend to what I was doing. Then she shook her head over me, sighed, and told me to run along and come back when I had a mind again. I was only too happy to obey her. The thought of actually leaving Buckkeep and journeying, journeying all the way to Neatbay was all I could fit inside my head. I knew I should wonder why I was going, but felt sure Chade would advise me soon. Would we go by land or by sea? I wished I had asked Burrich. The roads to Neatbay were not the best, I'd heard, but I wouldn't mind. Sooty and I had never been on a long journey together. But a sea trip, on a real ship…
I took the long way back to the keep, up a path that went through a lightly wooded bit of rocky hillside. Paper birches struggled there, and a few alder, but mostly it was nondescript brush. Sunlight and a light breeze were playing together in the higher branches, giving the day a fey and dappled air. I lifted my eyes to the dazzle of sun through the birch leaves, and when I looked down, the King's fool stood before me.
I stopped in my tracks, astonished. Reflexively, I looked for the King, despite how ridiculous it would have been to find him here. But the Fool was alone. And outside, in the daylight! The thought made the hair on my arms and neck stand up in my tightened skin. It was common knowledge in the keep that the King's fool could not abide the light of day. Common knowledge. Yet, despite what every page and kitchen maid nattered knowingly, there stood the Fool, pale hair floating in the light breeze. The blue and red silk of his motley jacket and trousers was startlingly bright against his paleness. But his eyes were not as colorless as they were in the dim passages of the keep. As I received their stare from only a few feet away in the light of day, I perceived there was a blueness to them, very pale, as if a single drop of pale blue wax had fallen onto a white platter. The whiteness of his skin was an illusion also, for out here in the dappling sunlight I could see a pinkness suffused him from within. Blood, I realized with a sudden quailing. Red blood showing through layers of skin.
The Fool took no notice of my whispered comment. Instead, a finger was held aloft, as if to pause not only my thoughts but the very day around us. But I could not have focused my attention more completely on anything, and when he was satisfied of this, the Fool smiled, showing small white separate teeth, like a baby's new smile in a boy's mouth.
"Fitz!" he intoned in a piping voice. "Fitz fitz fice fitz. Fatz sfitz." He stopped abruptly, and again gave me that smile. I stared back uncertainly, without word or movement.
Again the finger soared aloft, and this time was shaken at me. "Fitz! Fitz fix fice fitz. Fats sfitzes." He cocked his head at me, and the movement sent the dandelion fluff of his hair wafting in a new direction.
I was beginning to lose my fear of him. "Fitz," I said carefully, and tapped my chest with my forefinger. "Fitz, that's me. Yes. My name is Fitz. Are you lost?" I tried to make my voice gentle and reassuring so as not to alarm the poor creature. For surely he had somehow wandered off from the keep, and that was why he seemed so delighted to find a familiar face.
He took a breath through his nose, and then shook his head violently, until his hair stood out all around his skull like a flame around a windblown candle. "Fitz!" he said emphatically, his voice cracking a little. "Fitz fitzes fyces fitz. Fatzafices."
"It's all right," I said soothingly. I crouched a bit, though in reality I was not that much taller than the Fool. I made a soft beckoning motion with my open hand. "Come along, then. Come along. I'll show you the way back home. All right? Don't be afraid now."
Abruptly the Fool dropped his hands to his sides. Then he lifted his face and rolled his eyes at the heavens. He looked back at me fixedly and poked his mouth out as if he wanted to spit.
"Come along now." I beckoned to him again.
"No," he said, quite plainly in an exasperated voice. "Listen to me, you idiot. Fitz fixes fyces fitz. Fatsafices."
"What?" I asked, startled.
"I said," he enunciated elaborately. "Fitz fixes fyce fits. Fat suffices." He bowed, turned, and began to walk away from me, up the trail.
"Wait!" I demanded. My ears were turning red with my embarrassment. How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years that he was a moron as well as a fool? I couldn't. So: "What does all that fitzy-ficeys stuff mean? Are you making fun of me?"
"Hardly." He paused long enough to turn and say, "Fitz fixes feists fits. Fat suffices. It's a message, I believe. A calling for a significant act. As you are the only one l know who endures being called Fitz, I believe it's for you. As for what it means, how should I know? I'm a fool, not an interpreter of dreams. Good day." Again he turned away from me, but this time instead of continuing up the path, he stepped off it, into a clump of buckbrush. I hurried after him, but when I got to where he had left the path, he was gone. I stood still, peering into the open, sun-dappled woods, thinking I should see a bush still swaying from his passage, or catch a glimpse of his motley jacket. But there was no sign of him.
And no sense at all to his silly message. I mulled over the strange encounter all the way back to the keep, but in the end I set it aside as a strange but random occurrence.
Not that night, but the next, Chade called me. Burning with curiosity, I raced up the stairs. But when I reached the top, I halted, knowing that my questions would have to wait. For there sat Chade at the stone table, Slink perched atop his shoulders, and a new scroll half-unwound on the table before him. A glass of wine weighted one end as his crooked finger traveled slowly down some sort of listing. I glanced at it as I passed. It was a list of villages and dates.
Beneath each village name was a tally — so many warriors, so many merchants, so many sheep or casks of ale or measures of grain, and so on. I sat down on the opposite side of the table and waited. I had learned not to interrupt Chade.
"My boy," he said softly, without looking up from the scroll. "What would you do if some ruffian walked up behind you and rapped you on the head? But only when your back was turned. How would you handle it?"
I thought briefly. "I'd turn my back and pretend to be looking at something else. Only I'd have a long, thick stick in my hands. So when he rapped ine, I'd spin around and break his head."
"Hm. Yes. Well, we tried that. But no matter how nonchalant we are, the Outislanders always seem to know when we are baiting them and
never attack. Well, actually, we've managed to fool one or two of the ordinary raiders. But never the Red-Ship Raiders. And those are the ones we want to hurt."
"Why?"
"Because they are the ones that are hurting us the worst. You see, boy, we are used to being raided. You could almost say that we've adapted to it. Plant an extra acre, weave another bolt of cloth, raise an extra steer. Our farmers and townsfolk always try to put a bit extra by, and when someone's barn gets burned or a warehouse is torched in the confusion of a raid, everyone turns out to raise the beams again. But the Red-Ship Raiders aren't just stealing, and destroying in the process of stealing. They're destroying, and what they actually carry off with them seems almost incidental." Chade paused and stared at a wall as if seeing through it.
"It makes no sense," he continued bemusedly, more to himself than to me. "Or at least no sense that I can unravel. It's like killing a cow that bears a good calf every year. Red-Ship Raiders torch the grain and hay still standing in the fields. They slaughter the stock they can't carry off. Three weeks ago, in Tornsby, they set fire to the mill and slashed open the sacks of grain and flour there.
Where's the profit in that for them? Why do they risk their lives simply to destroy? They've made no effort to take and hold territory; they have no grievance against us that they've ever uttered. A thief you can guard against, but these are random killers and destroyers. Tornsby won't be rebuilt; the folk that survived have neither the will nor the resources. They've moved on, some to family in other towns, others to be beggars in our cities. It's a pattern we're seeing too often."
He sighed, and then shook his head to clear it. When he looked up, he focused on me totally. It was a knack Chade had. He could set aside a problem so completely you would swear he had forgotten it. Now he announced, as if it were his only care, "You'll be accompanying Verity when he goes to reason with Lord Kelvar at Neatbay."
"So Burrich told me. But he wondered, and so do I. Why?"
Chade looked perplexed. "Didn't you complain a few months ago that you had wearied of Buckkeep and wished to see more of the Six Duchies?"
"Certainly. But I rather doubt that that is why Verity is taking me."
Chade snorted. "As if Verity paid any attention as to who makes up his retinue. He has no patience with the details; and hence none of Chivalry's genius for handling people. Yet Verity is a good soldier, and in the long run, perhaps that will be what we need. No, you are right. Verity has no inkling as to why you are going… yet. Shrewd will tell him you are trained as a spy. And that is all, for now. He and I have consulted together upon this. Are you ready to begin repaying all he has done for you? Are you ready to begin your service for the family?"
He said it so calmly and looked at me so openly that it was almost easy to be calm as I asked, "Will I have to kill someone?"
"Perhaps." He shifted in his chair. "You'll have to decide that. Deciding and then doing it… it's different from simply being told, 'That is the man and it must be done.' It's much harder, and I'm not all that sure you're ready."
"Would I ever be ready?" I tried to smile, and grinned like a muscle spasm. I tried to wipe it away, and couldn't. A strange quiver passed through me.
"Probably not." Chade fell silent, and then decided that I had accepted the mission. "You'll go as an attendant for an elderly noblewoman who is also going along, to visit relatives in Neatbay. It will not be too heavy a task for you. She is very elderly and her health is not good. Lady Thyme travels in a closed litter. You will ride beside it, to see she is not jolted too much, to bring her water if she asks for it, and to see to any other such small requests."
"It doesn't sound too different from caring for Verity's wolfhound."
Chade paused, then smiled. "Excellent. That will fall to you as well. Become indispensable to everyone on this journey. Then you will have reasons to go everywhere and hear everything, and no one will question your presence."
"And my real task?"
"To listen and learn. It seems to both Shrewd and me that these Red-Ship Raiders are too well acquainted with our strategies and strengths. Kelvar has recently begrudged the funds to staff the Watch Island Tower properly. Twice he has neglected it, and twice have the coast villages of Shoaks Duchy paid for his negligence. Has he gone beyond negligence to treachery? Does Kelvar confer with the enemy to his profit? We want you to sniff about and see what you can discover. If all you find is innocence, or if you have but strong suspicions, bring news back to us. But if you discover treachery, and you are certain of it, then we cannot be rid of him too soon."
"And the means?" I was not sure that was my voice. It was so casual, so contained.
"I have prepared a powder, tasteless in a dish, colorless in a wine. We trust to your ingenuity and discretion in applying it." He lifted a cover from an earthenware dish on the table. Within it was a packet made of very fine paper, thinner and finer than anything Fedwren had ever shown me. Odd, how my first thought was how much my scribe master would love to work with paper like that. Within the packet was the finest of white powders. It clung to the paper and floated in the air. Chade shielded his mouth and nose with a cloth as he tapped a careful measure of it into a twist of oiled paper. He held it out to me, and I took death upon my open palm.
"And how does it work?"
"Not too quickly. He will not fall dead at the table, if that is what you are asking. But if he lingers over his cup, he will feel ill. Knowing Kelvar, I suspect he will take his bubbling stomach to bed, and never awaken in the morning."
I slipped it into my pocket. "Does Verity know anything of this?"
Chade considered. "Verity is as good as his name. He could not sit at table with a man he was poisoning and conceal it. No, in this endeavor, stealth will serve us better than truth." He looked me directly in the eyes. "You will work alone, with no counsel other than your own."
"I see." I shifted on my tall wooden stool. "Chade?"
"Yes?"
"Is this how it was for you? Your first time?"
He looked down at his hands, and for a moment he fingered the angry red scars that dotted the back of his left hand. The silence grew long, but I waited.
"I was a year older than you are," he said at last. "And it was simply the doing of it, not the deciding if it should be done. Is that enough for you?"
I was suddenly embarrassed without knowing why. "I suppose," I mumbled.
"Good. I know you meant no harm by it, boy. But men don't talk about times spent among the pillows with a lady. And assassins don't talk about… our business."
"Not even teacher to pupil?"
Chade looked away from me, to a dark corner of the ceiling. "No." After a moment more he added, "Two weeks from now, you'll perhaps understand why." And that was all we ever said about it. By my count, I was thirteen years old.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lady Thyme
A HISTORY OF THE DUCHIES is a study of their geography. The court scribe of King Shrewd, one Fedwren, was very fond of this saying. I cannot say I have ever found it wrong. Perhaps all histories are recountings of natural boundaries. The seas and ice that stood between us and the Outislanders made us separate peoples and the rich grasslands and fertile meadows of the Duchies created the riches that made us enemies; perhaps that would be the first chapter of a history of the Duchies. The Bear and the Vin rivers are what created the rich vineyards and orchards of Tilth, as surely as the Painted Edges Mountains rising above Sandsedge both sheltered and isolated the folk there and left them vulnerable to our organized armies.
I jerked awake before the moon had surrendered her reign over the sky, amazed that I had slept at all. Burrich had supervised my travel preparations so thoroughly the night before that, had it been left to me, I would have departed a minute after I had swallowed my morning porridge.
But such is not the way when a group of folk set out together to do anything. The sun was well over the horizon before we were all assembled and ready. "Royalty," Chade had warned me, "
never travels light. Verity goes on this journey with the weight of the King's sword behind him. All folk who see him pass know that without being told. The news must run ahead to Kelvar, and to Shemshy. The imperial hand is about to reconcile their differences. They must both be left wishing they had never had any differences at all. That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention."
So Verity traveled with a pomp that clearly irritated the soldier in him. His picked troop of men wore his colors as well as the Farseer buck badges, and rode ahead of the regular troops. To my young eyes, that was impressive enough. But to keep the impact from being too martial, Verity brought with him noble companions to provide conversation and diversion at the end of the day. Hawks and hounds with their handlers, musicians and bards, one puppeteer, those who fetched and carried for the lords and ladies, those who saw to their garments and hair and the cooking of favorite dishes; baggage beasts; all trailed behind the well-mounted nobles, and made the tail of our procession.
My place was about midway in the procession. I sat a restive Sooty beside an ornate litter borne between two sedate gray geldings. Hands, one of the brighter stable boys, had been assigned a pony and given charge of the horses bearing the litter. I would manage our baggage mule and see to the litter's occupant. This was the very elderly Lady Thyme, who I had never met before. When she at last appeared to mount her litter, she was so swathed in cloaks, veils, and scarves that I received only the impression that she was elderly in a gaunt rather than plump way, and that her perfume caused Sooty to sneeze. She settled herself in the litter amidst a nest of cushions, blankets, furs, and wraps, then immediately ordered that the curtains be drawn and fastened despite the fineness of the morning. The two little maids who had attended her darted happily away, and I was left, her sole servant. My heart sank. I had expected at least one of them to travel within the litter with her. Who was going to see to her personal needs when her pavilion was set up? I had no notion as to waiting on a woman, let alone a very elderly one. I resolved to follow Burrich's advice for a young man dealing with elderly women: be attentive and polite, cheerful and pleasant of mien. Old women were easily won over by a personable young man. Burrich said so. I approached the litter.