Assassin's Quest tft-3

by Robin Hobb

  Justice. I put no more than a breath of Skill onto the thought. I was not sure if it was my own or Verity's apprehension that I suddenly felt. I brushed it aside and turned to my task.

  It was frustrating. There was little here that was a sure vehicle for my poisons. I could treat the pomade, but I was more likely to kill whoever dressed his hair for him than Regal. The censers held mostly ash. Anything I placed there would probably be dumped with the ash. The corner hearth was swept clean for the summer and there was no supply of wood. Patience, I told myself. His bedchamber could not be far, and opportunities would be better there. For now, I treated the bristles of his hairbrush with one of my more potent concoctions and used what was left to dip as many of his earrings as I could. The last drops I added to his vials of scent but with small hope that be would apply enough to kill himself. For the scented handkerchiefs folded in his drawer, I had the white spore of the death angel mushroom to beguile his hours until death with hallucinations. I took greater pleasure in dusting the insides of four sets of gloves with deadroot powder. This was the poison Regal had used on me in the Mountains, and the most likely source of the seizures that had plagued me intermittently since then. I hoped he would find his own falling fits as amusing as he had mine. I selected three of his shirts that I thought he would favor, and treated their collars and cuffs as well. There was no wood in the hearth, but I had a poison that blended well with the traces of ash and soot left on the brick. I sprinkled it generously and hoped that when they set a fire upon it, the burning fumes might reach Regal's nose. I had just returned my poison to my pouch when I heard a key turn the door latch.

  I stepped silently around the corner of a wardrobe and stood there. My knife was already in my hand, waiting. A deadly calm had settled on me. I breathed silently, waiting, hoping fortune had brought Regal to me. Instead, it was another guardsman in Regal's colors. The man pushed into the room and cast a quick glance about. His irritation showed in his face as he impatiently said, "It was locked. There's no one in here." I waited for his partner to reply, but he was alone. He stood still a moment, then sighed and walked over to the open wardrobe. "Foolishness. I'm wasting time up here while he's going to get away," he muttered to himself, but he drew his sword and carefully prodded about the interior behind the clothes.

  As he leaned to reach deeper into the wardrobe's interior, I caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror opposite me. My guts turned to water, and then hatred blazed up in me. I had no name for this one, but his mocking face had been forever etched into my memory. He had been part of Regal's personal guard, and had stood by to witness my death.

  I think he saw my reflection at the same time I saw his. I did not give him time to react, but sprang on him from behind. The blade of his sword was still tangled inside Regal's wardrobe when my knife punched low into his belly. I clamped my forearm across his throat to give me leverage as I dragged up on the knife, gutting him like a fish. His mouth gaped open to scream, and I let go my knife to slap my hand over his mouth. I held him a moment as his entrails bulged out of the gash I'd made. When I let him go, he went down, his unvoiced bellow turned to a groan. He'd not let go of his sword, so I stamped on his hand, breaking his fingers around its hilt. He rolled slightly to one side, to stare up at me in agony and shock. I went down on one knee beside him, put my face close to his.

  "FitzChivalry," I said quietly, meeting his eyes, making sure he knew. "FitzChivalry." For the second time that night, I cut a throat. It scarcely needed doing. I wiped my knife on his sleeve as he died. As I stood, I felt two things. Disappointment that he had died so swiftly. And a sensation as if a harp string had been plucked, letting out a sound I felt rather than heard.

  In the next instant, I felt a wave of Skill inundate me. It was laden with terror, but this time I recognized it for what it was and knew its source. I stood firm before it, my defenses strong. I almost felt it part and go around me. Yet I sensed that even that act was read by someone, somewhere. I did not wonder who. Will felt the shape of my resistance. I felt the echo of his surge of triumph. For a moment it froze me with panic. Then I was moving, sheathing my knife, rising to slip out the door and into the still-empty hallway. I had but a short time to find a new hiding place. Will had been riding with the guardsman's mind, had seen that chamber and me just as clearly as the dying man had. Like the sounding of horns, I could sense him Skilling out, setting the guards in motion as if he were setting dogs to a fox's trail.

  As I fled, a part of me knew with undeniable certainty that I was dead. I might be able to hide myself for a time, but Will knew I was within the mansion. All he had to do was block off every exit and begin a systematic search. I raced down a hall, turned a corner, and went up a staircase there. I held my Skill walls firm and clutched my tiny plan to myself as if it were a precious gem. I would find Regal's chambers and poison everything there. Then I would go seeking Regal himself. If the guards discovered me first, well, I'd lead them a merry chase. They couldn't kill me. Not with all the poison I was carrying. I'd take my own life first. It wasn't much of a plan, but the only alternative was surrendering.

  So I raced on, past more doors, more statuary and flowers, more hangings. Every door I tried was locked. I turned another corner and was suddenly back at the top of the staircase. I felt a moment of dizzy disorientation. I attempted to brush it off but panic rose like a black tide inside my mind. It appeared to be the same staircase. I knew I had not turned enough corners to have come back to it. I hurried past the staircase, past the doors again, hearing the shouts of guardsmen below me as knowledge grew and squirmed queasily inside me.

  Will leaned on my mind.

  Dizziness and pressure inside my eyes. Grimly I set my mental walls yet again. I turned my head quickly and my vision doubled for a moment. Smoke, I wondered? I had no head for any of the fume intoxicants that Regal favored. Yet this felt like more to me than the giddiness of Smoke or the mellowness of merrybud.

  The Skill is a powerful tool in the hand of a master. I had been with Verity when he had used it against the Red-Ships, to so muddle a helmsman that he turned his own ships onto the rocks, to convince a navigator that be had not yet passed a point of land when it was far behind him, to raise fears and doubts in a captain's heart before he went into battle, or to bolster the courage of a ship's crew so that they foolhardily set sail into the very teeth of a storm.

  How long had Will been working on me? Had he lured me here, for this encounter, by subtly convincing me that he would never expect me to come?

  I forced myself to halt at the next door. I held myself firm, focused myself on the latch of the door as I worked it. It was not locked. I slipped into it, closing the door behind me. Blue fabric was set out on a table before me, ready for sewing. I'd been in this room before. I knew a moment of relief, then checked it. No. This room had been on the ground floor. I was upstairs. Wasn't I? I crossed quickly to the window, stood to one side of it as I peered out. Far below me were the torch lit grounds of the King's Gardens. I could see the white of the great drive gleaming in the night. Carriages were coming up it and liveried servants darted here and there, opening doors. Ladies and gentlemen in extravagant red evening clothes were leaving in droves. I gathered that Verde's end had rather spoiled Regal's ball. There were liveried guards on the doors, regulating who might leave and who must wait. All this I took in at a glance, and realized also that I was up a lot higher than I thought.

  Yet I had been sure that this table and the blue garments waiting to be sewn had been down in the servants' wing of the ground floor.

  Well, it was not all that unlikely that Regal would be having two different sets of blue clothes sewn. No time to puzzle about it; I had to find his bedchamber. I felt a strange elation as I slipped out of the room and fled once more down the hallway, a thrill not unlike that of a good hunt. Let them catch me if they could.

  I came suddenly to a T in the corridor and stood a moment, puzzled. It did not seem to fit in with what I had seen of t
he building from outside. I glanced left, then right. Right was noticeably grander, and the tall double doors at the end of the hall were emblazoned with the golden oak of Farrow. As if to put spurs to me, I heard a mutter of angry voices from a room somewhere off to my left. I went right, drawing my knife as I ran. When I came to the great double doors, I put my hand to the latch quietly, expecting to find it locked tight. Instead the door gave easily and swung forward silently. It was almost too easy. I set those apprehensions aside and slipped in, knife drawn.

  The room before me was dark, save for two candles burning in silver holders on the mantelpiece. I slipped inside what was obviously Regal's sitting room. A second door stood ajar, revealing the corner of a magnificently curtained bed and beyond it a hearth with a rack of firewood laid ready in it. I pulled the door gently closed behind me and advanced into the room. On a low table a carafe of wine and two glasses awaited Regal's return, as did a platter of sweets. The censer beside it was heaped with powdered Smoke waiting to be ignited on his return. It was an assassin's fantasy. I could scarcely decide where to begin.

  "That, you see, is how it is done."

  I spun about, then experienced a distortion of my senses that dizzied me. I stood in the middle of a well-lit but rather bare room. Will sat, negligently relaxed, in a cushioned chair. A glass of white wine waited on a table beside him. Carrod and Burl flanked him, wearing expressions of irritation and discomfiture. Despite my longing, I dared not take my eyes off them.

  "Go ahead, Bastard, look behind you. I shan't attack you. It would be a shame to spring such a trap as this on one such as you, and have you die before you appreciated the fullness of your failure. Go on. Look behind you."

  I turned my whole body slowly, to allow me to glance back with a mere shifting of my eyes. Gone, it was all gone. No royal sitting room, no curtained bed or carafe of wine, nothing. A plain, simple room, probably for several lady's maids to share. Six liveried guards stood silent but attentive. All had drawn swords.

  "My companions seem to feel that a drenching of fear will ferret out any man. But they, of course, have not experienced your strength of will as completely as I have. I do hope you appreciate the finesse I used, in simply assuring you that you were seeing exactly what you most wished to see." He gave a glance each to Carrod and Burl. "He has walls the like of which you have never experienced. But a wall that will not yield to a battering ram can still be breached by the gentle twining of ivy." He swung his attention back to me. "You would have been a worthy opponent, save that in your conceit you always underestimated me."

  I still had not said a word. I stared at them all, letting the hatred that filled me strengthen my Skill walls. All three had changed since I had last seen them. Burl, once a well-muscled carpenter, showed the effects of a good appetite and lack of exercise. Carrod's attire outshone the man within it. Ribbons and charms festooned his garments like blossoms on a springtime apple tree. But Will, seated between them in his chair, showed the greatest change of all. He was dressed entirely in dark blue, in garments whose precise tailoring made them seem richer than Carrod's costume. A single chain of silver, a silver ring on his hand, silver earrings; these were his only ornaments. Of his dark eyes, once so terrifyingly piercing, only one remained. The other was sunken deep in its socket, showing cloudy in the depths like a dead fish in a dirty pool. He smiled at me as he saw me looking at it. He gestured at his eye.

  "A memento of our last encounter. Whatever it was that you threw into my face."

  "A pity," I said, quite sincerely. "I had meant those poisons to kill Regal, not half-blind you."

  Will sighed lackadaisically. "Another admission of treason. As if we needed one. Ah, well. We shall be more thorough this time. First, of course, we will spend a bit of time ferreting out just how you escaped death. A bit of time for that, and however much longer King Regal finds you amusing. He will have no need for either haste or discretion this time." He gave a minuscule nod to the guards behind me.

  I smiled at him as I set the poisoned blade of my own knife to my left arm. I clenched my teeth against the pain as I dragged it down the length of my arm, not deeply, but enough to open my skin and let the poison from the blade into my blood. Will leaped to his feet in shock, while Carrod and Burl looked horrified and disgusted. I passed my knife to my left hand, drew my sword with my right.

  "I'm dying now," I told them, smiling. "Probably very soon. I've no time to waste, and nothing to lose."

  But he had been correct. I had always underestimated him. Somehow I found myself facing, not the coterie members, but six guards with drawn blades. Killing myself was one thing. Being hacked to death while those I desired vengeance on watched was another. I spun about, and felt a wave of dizziness as I did so, as if the room moved rather than I myself. I lifted my eyes to find the swordsmen still confronting me. I turned again and again, experienced a sensation of swinging. The thin line of blood along my arm had begun to burn. My chance to do anything about Will and Burl and Carrod was leaking away as the poison seeped through my blood.

  The guards were advancing on me, unhurriedly, fanning out in a half circle and driving me before them as if I were an errant sheep. I backed up, glanced once over my shoulder and caught the most fleeting glimpse of the coterie members. Will stood, a step or so in front of the others, an annoyed look on his face. I had come here in the hope of killing Regal. I had barely succeeded in annoying his henchman with my suicide.

  Suicide? Somewhere deep within me, Verity was horrorstruck.

  Better than torture. Less than a whisper of Skill on that thought, but I swear I felt Will go groping after it.

  Boy, stop this insanity. Get out of there. Come to me.

  I cannot. It's too late. There's no escape. Let go of me, you only reveal yourself to them.

  Reveal myself? Verity's Skill boomed suddenly in my mind, like thunder on a summer night, like storm waves shaking a shale cliff. I had seen him do this before. Angered, he would expend all of his Skillstrength 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. It was not directed at me, but still I went to my knees. I heard Carrod and Burl cry out, guttural cries of terror. For a moment my head and perceptions cleared, and I saw the room as it had always been, with the guardsmen arrayed between me and the coterie. Will was stretched senseless on the floor.

  Perhaps I alone felt the great surge of strength it cost Verity to save me. The guards were staggering, wilting like candles in the sun. I spun, saw the door at my back as it opened to admit more guards. Three strides would carry me to the window.

  COME TO ME!

  There was no choice left for me in that command. It was impregnated with the Skill it rode on, and it burned into my brain, becoming one with my breathing and the beating of my heart. I had to go to Verity. It was a cry both of command and, now, of need. My king had sacrificed his reserves to save me.

  There were heavy curtains over the window, and thick whorled glass behind them. Neither stopped me as I launched myself out into the air beyond, hoping there would at least be bushes below me to break some of my fall. Instead I slammed to the earth amid the shards of glass a fraction of a moment later. I had leaped, expecting to fall at least one story, from a ground floor window. For a split second I appreciated the completeness of how Will had deceived me. Then I staggered to my feet, still clutching my knife and my sword, and ran.

  The grounds were not well lit outside the servants' wing. I blessed the darkness and fled. Behind me I heard cries, and then Burl shouting orders. They'd be on my trail in moments. I'd not escape here on foot. I veered off to the more solid darkness of the stables.

  The departure of the ball's guests had stirred the stable to activity. Most of the hands on duty wer
e probably around in front of the mansion, holding horses. The doors of the stable were opened wide to the soft night air, and lanterns were lit within it. I charged in, very nearly bowling over a stablehand. She could not have been more than ten, a skinny, freckled girl, and she staggered back, then shrieked at the sight of my drawn weapons.

  "I'm just taking a horse," I told her reassuringly. "I won't hurt you." She was backing away as I sheathed my sword and then my knife. She spun suddenly. "Hands! Hands!" She raced off shrieking his name. I had no time to give any thought to it. Three stalls down from me, I saw Regal's own black regarding me curiously over his manger. I approached him calmly, reached to rub his nose and recall myself to him. Perhaps it had been eight months since he'd smelled me, but I'd known him since he was foaled. He nibbled at my collar, his whiskers tickling my neck. "Come on, Arrow. We're going for some night exercise. Just like old times, huh, fellow?" I eased his stall open, took his halter, and walked him out. I didn't know where the girl had gone, but I could no longer hear her.

  Arrow was tall, and not accustomed to being ridden bare-back. He crow hopped a bit as I scrabbled up onto his sleek back. Even in the midst of all the danger, I felt a keen pleasure at being on horseback again. I gripped his mane, kneed him forward. He took three steps, then halted at the man blocking his way. I looked down at Hands' incredulous face. I had to grin at his shocked expression.

  "Just me, Hands. Got to borrow a horse, or they'll kill me. Again."

  I think perhaps I expected him to laugh and wave me through. Instead he just stared up at me, going whiter and whiter until I thought he'd faint.

  "It's me, Fitz. I'm not dead! Let me out, Hands!"

  He stepped back. "Sweet Eda!" he exclaimed, and I thought surely he would throw back his head and laugh. Instead, he hissed, "Beast magic!" Then he spun and fled off into the night, bawling, "Guards! Guards!"

  I lost perhaps two seconds gawking after him. I felt a wrench inside me such as I had not felt since Molly had left me. The years of friendship, the long day-in, day-out routine of stablework together, all washed away in a moment of his superstitious terror. It was unfair, but I felt sickened by his betrayal. Coldness welled up in me, but I set heels to Arrow and plunged out into darkness.