Royal Assassin

by Robin Hobb

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  I gathered up the red blanket, shook sand from it. She pulled her cloak tight against the wind that whipped at it. “Best we don’t go back together,” she observed. She came close to me, stood on tiptoe to kiss the angle of my jaw. I could not decide who I was angrier at: King Shrewd for creating this mess, or Molly for believing in it. I did not turn to her kiss. She said nothing of that, but only hurried away, to scrabble lightly up the rock chimney and vanish from sight.

  All joy had gone out of my afternoon. What had been as perfect as a gleaming seashell was now crushed bits under my feet. I walked disconsolately home through gusting winds and pelting rain. I had not rebound my hair and it whipped in lank strands across my face. The wet blanket stank as only wool can and bled red dye onto my hands. I went up to my room and dried off, then amused myself by carefully preparing the perfect poison for Wallace. One that would rack his bowels before he died. When the powder was mixed fine and put in a twist of paper, I set it down and looked at it. For a while I considered taking it myself. Instead, I took up needle and thread to devise a pocket inside my cuff where I could carry it. I wondered if I would ever use it. The wondering made me feel more a coward than ever.

  I did not go down to dinner. I did not go up to Molly. I opened my shutters and let the storm spill rain across my floor. I let the hearth fire go out and refused to light any candles. It seemed a time for gestures like those. When Chade opened his passage to me, I ignored it. I sat on the foot of my bed, staring out into the rain.

  After a time I heard hesitant footsteps come down the stairs. Chade appeared in my darkened room like a wraith. He glared at me, then crossed to the shutters and slammed them shut. As he hooked them he asked me angrily, “Have you any idea of the kind of draft that creates in my rooms?” When I didn’t reply, he lifted his head and snuffed, for all the world like a wolf. “Have you been working with baneleaf in here?” he asked suddenly. He came to stand before me. “Fitz, you’ve not done anything stupid, have you?”

  “Stupid? Me?” I choked on a laugh.

  Chade stooped to peer into my face. “Come up to my chamber,” he said, in an almost kindly voice. He took my arm and I went with him.

  The cheery room, the crackling fire, the autumn fruit ripe in a bowl; all of it clashed so badly with what I felt that I wanted to smash things. Instead I asked Chade, “Does anything feel worse than being angry with people you love?”

  After a bit he spoke. “Watching someone you love die. And being angry, but not knowing where to direct it. I think that’s worse. ”

  I flung myself onto a side chair, kicked my feet out in front of me. “Shrewd has taken up Regal’s habits. Smoke. Mirthweed. El only knows what else in his wine. This morning, without his drugs, he began to shake, and then he drank them mixed with his wine, took a chestful of Smoke, and went to sleep in my face. After telling me, again, that I must court and marry Celerity, for my own good. ” The words spilled from me. I had no doubt that Chade already knew of everything I told him.

  I pinned Chade with my eyes. “I love Molly,” I told him bluntly. “I have told Shrewd that I love another. Yet he insists that I will be paired with Celerity. He asks how I cannot understand he means the best for me. How cannot he understand that I wish to wed whom I love?”

  Chade looked considering. “Have you discussed this with Verity?”

  “What good would that do? He could not even save himself from being wed off to a woman he did not desire. ” I felt disloyal to Kettricken as I said this. But I knew it was true.

  “Would you care for wine?” Chade asked me mildly. “It might calm you. ”

  “No. ”

  He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “No. Thank you. After watching Shrewd ‘calm’ himself with wine this morning …” I let my complaint trail away. “Was that man never young?”

  “Once, he was very young. ” Chade permitted himself a small smile. “Perhaps he remembers that Constance was a woman chosen for him by his parents. He did not court her willingly, nor wed her gladly. It took her death to make him know how deeply he had come to love her. Desire, on the other hand, he chose for himself, in a passion that fevered him. ” He paused. “I will not speak ill of the dead. ”

  “This is different,” I said.

  “How?”

  “I am not to be king. Who I wed affects no one but me. ”

  “Would it were that simple,” Chade said softly. “Can you believe you can refuse Celerity’s courtship without offending Brawndy? At a time when the Six Duchies need every bond of unity?”

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  “I am convinced I can make her decide she does not want me. ”

  “How? By being an oaf? And shaming Shrewd?”

  I felt caged. I tried to think of solutions, but found only one answer in me. “I will marry no one except Molly. ” I felt better simply by saying it aloud. I met Chade’s eyes.

  He shook his head. “Then you will marry no one,” he pointed out.

  “Perhaps not,” I acceded. “Perhaps we shall never be married in name. But we shall have a life together—”

  “And little bastards of your own. ”

  I stood convulsively, my fists knotting of their own accord. “Don’t say that,” I warned Chade. I turned away from him to glare into his fire.

  “I wouldn’t. But everyone else will. ” He sighed. “Fitz, Fitz, Fitz. ” He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. Very, very gently, he said, “It might be best to let her go. ”

  The touch and the gentleness had disarmed me of my anger. I lifted my hands to cover my face. “I cannot,” I said through my fingers. “I need her. ”

  “What does Molly need?”

  A little chandlery with beehives in the backyard of it. Children. A legitimate husband. “You are doing this for Shrewd. To make me do as he wishes,” I accused Chade.

  He lifted his hands from my shoulders. I listened to him walk away, to wine being poured into a single cup. He brought his wine with him to his chair and sat down before his fire.

  “I’m sorry. ”

  He looked at me. “Someday, FitzChivalry,” he warned me, “those words will not be enough. Sometimes it is easier to pull a knife out of a man than to ask him to forget words you have uttered. Even words uttered in anger. ”

  “I am sorry,” I repeated.

  “So am I,” he said shortly.

  After a time I asked humbly, “Why did you wish to see me tonight?”

  He sighed. “Forged ones. Southwest of Buckkeep. ”

  I felt ill. “I had thought I would not have to do that anymore,” I said quietly. “When Verity put me on a ship to Skill for him, he said that perhaps—”

  “This does not come from Verity. It was reported to Shrewd, and he wishes it taken care of. Verity is already … overtaxed. We do not wish to trouble him with anything else just now. ”

  I put my head back into my hands. “Is there no one else who can do this?” I begged him.

  “Only you and I are trained for this. ”

  “I did not mean you,” I said wearily. “I do not expect you to do that sort of work anymore. ”

  “Don’t you?” I looked up to find the anger back in his eyes. “You arrogant pup! Who do you think kept them from Buckkeep all summer, Fitz, while you were out on the Rurisk? Did you think that because you wished to avoid a task, the need for such work ceased?”

  I was as shamed then as I have ever been. I looked aside from his anger. “Oh, Chade. I am sorry. ”

  “Sorry that you avoided it? Or sorry that you thought me incapable of doing it anymore?”

  “Both. Everything. ” I conceded it all suddenly. “Please, Chade, if one more person I care about becomes angry with me, I don’t think I shall be able to bear it. ” I lifted my head and looked at him steadily until he was forced to meet my eyes.

  He lifted a hand to scratch at his beard. �
��It has been a long summer for both of us. Pray El for storms to drive the Red-Ships away forever. ”

  We sat a time in silence.

  “Sometimes,” Chade observed, “it would be much easier to die for one’s king than to give one’s life to him. ”

  I bowed my head in assent. The rest of the night we spent preparing the poisons I would need in order to begin killing for my king again.

  18

  Elderlings

  THE AUTUMN OF the third year of the Red-Ship War was a bitter one for King-in-Waiting Verity. His warships had been his dream. He had founded all his hopes on them. He had believed he could rid his own coast of Raiders, and be so successful at it that he could send forth raiders against the hostile Outisland coasts even during the worst of the winter storms. Despite early victories, the ships never achieved the command of the coast that he had hoped they would. Early winter found him with a fleet of five ships, two of which had recently sustained severe damage. One intact was the captured Red-Ship vessel, which had been refitted and sent out with a crew to assist in patrols and escorting of merchant vessels. When the winds of autumn finally arrived, only one of his ships’ masters expressed enough confidence in his crew’s skills and his vessel to be willing to undertake a raid against the Outislander coasts. The other masters argued for at least one winter of practicing seamanship along our own rough coast, and another summer of practicing tactics, before undertaking such an ambitious goal.

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  Verity would not send unwilling men, but neither did he hide his disappointment. He expressed it well when he outfitted the one willing ship, for the Revenge, as the vessel had been renamed, was provisioned handsomely. The master’s handpicked crew were outfitted as well, in whatever armor they chose for themselves, and were given new weapons of the best craftsmanship available. There was quite a ceremony at her send-off, with even King Shrewd in attendance despite his failing health. The Queen herself hung the gull’s feathers from the ship’s mast that are said to bring a vessel swiftly and safely back to her home port. A great cheer arose as the Revenge set out, and the health of the captain and crew were drunk many times over that evening.

  A month later, to Verity’s chagrin, we would receive word that a vessel matching the Revenge’s description was pirating in the calmer waters to the south of the Six Duchies and bringing much misery to the merchants of Bingtown and the Chalced States. That was as much news of the captain and crew and ship as ever came back to Buckkeep. Some blamed it on the Outislanders among the crew, but there were as many good Six Duchies hands aboard as Outislanders, and the captain had been raised right in Buckkeep Town. This was a crushing blow to Verity’s pride and to his leadership of his people. Some believe it was then that he decided to sacrifice himself in the hopes of finding a final solution.

  I think the Fool put her up to it. Certainly he had spent a great many hours in the tower-top garden with Kettricken, and his admiration for what she had accomplished there was unfeigned. Much goodwill can be won with a sincere compliment. By the end of the summer, not only was she laughing at his jests when he came up to entertain her and her ladies, but he had persuaded her to be a frequent caller in the King’s chambers. As queen-in-waiting, she was immune to Wallace’s humors. Kettricken herself undertook to mix King Shrewd strengthening tonics, and for a time the King did seem to rally under her care and attention. I think the Fool decided that he would accomplish through her what he had been unable to nag Verity and me into doing.

  It was a wintry fall evening when she first broached the subject to me. I was up on the tower top with her, helping her to tie bundles of straw about the more tender of the plants there, that they might better withstand the winter snows. This was something Patience had decreed must be done, and she and Lacey were performing the same task on a bed of windbower plants behind me. She had become a frequent adviser to Queen Kettricken in matters of growing things, albeit a very timid one. Little Rosemary was at my elbow, handing me twine as we needed it. Two or three of Kettricken’s other ladies, well bundled, had stayed, but they were at the other end of the garden, talking quietly together. The others she had dismissed back to their hearths when she had noted them shivering and blowing on their fingers. My bare hands were near numb, as were my ears, but Kettricken seemed perfectly comfortable. As was Verity, tucked away somewhere inside my skull. He had insisted that I start carrying him again after he had discovered that once more I was going out after Forged ones alone. I scarcely noticed his presence in the back of my mind anymore. Yet I believe that I felt him startle when Kettricken asked me, as she knotted a string about a bundled plant I was supporting, what I knew of the Elderlings.

  “Little enough, my lady queen,” I replied honestly, and once more made a promise to myself to go through the long-neglected manuscripts and scrolls.

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “Well, little was actually written about them. I believe at one time a knowledge of them was so common as not to need writing down. And the bits that are written about them are scattered here and there, not gathered in one place. It would take a scholar to track down all the remnants…. ”

  “A scholar like the Fool?” she asked tartly. “He seems to know more of them than anyone else I have asked. ”

  “Well. He is fond of reading, you know, and—”

  “Enough of the Fool. I wish to speak to you of the Elderlings,” she said abruptly.

  I startled at her tone, but found her staring, gray-eyed, out over the sea once more. She had not intended either a rebuke or a rudeness. She was simply intent upon her objective. I reflected that in my months away she had become more certain of herself. More queenly.

  “I know a little bit,” I offered hesitantly.

  “As do I. Let us see if what each of us knows agrees. I shall begin. ”

  “As you wish, my queen. ”

  She cleared her throat. “Long ago, King Wisdom was bitterly besieged by raiders from the sea. When all else had failed him, and he feared that the next summer of kind weather would bring the end of the Six Duchies and House Farseer, he resolved to spend the winter searching for a legendary folk. The Elderlings. Do we agree so far?”

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  “Mostly. As I have heard it, the legends called them not a folk, but near gods. And the folk of the Six Duchies had always believed Wisdom something of a religious fanatic, almost a madman where such things were concerned. ”

  “Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad,” she calmly informed me. “I shall continue. He left his castle one fall, with no more information than that the Elderlings resided in the Rain Wilds beyond the tallest mountains of the Mountain Kingdom. Somehow, he found them, and he won their alliance. He returned to Buckkeep, and together they drove the raiders and invaders away from the coasts of the Six Duchies. Peace and trade were reestablished. And the Elderlings swore to him that if they were ever needed again, they would return. Do we still agree?”

  “As before, mostly. I have heard many minstrels say that the ending is a standard one in tales of heroes and quests. Always, they promise that if ever they are needed again, they will return. Some even pledge to return from beyond the grave if they must. ”

  “Actually,” Patience suddenly observed, rocking back on her heels, “Wisdom himself never returned to Buckkeep. The Elderlings came to his daughter, Princess Mindful, and it was to her they offered allegiance. ”

  “Whence do you have that knowledge?” Kettricken demanded.

  Patience shrugged. “An old minstrel my father used to have always sang it that way. ” Unconcerned, she went back to knotting twine about a straw-bundled plant.

  Kettricken considered a moment. The wind teased loose a long lock of her hair and blew it across her face like a net. She looked at me through the pale web. “It doesn’t matter what the tales say about their returning. If a King once sought them, and they gave aid, do you not think th
ey might do so again, if a King again beseeched them? Or a Queen?”

  “Perhaps,” I said grudgingly. Privately I wondered if the Queen longed for her homeland and would make any excuse for a visit there. Folk were beginning to talk about her lack of pregnancy. While many ladies attended her now, she really had no favorites that were genuinely her friends. Lonely, I suspected. “I think …” I began gently, pausing to consider how to frame a discouraging reply.

  Tell her she should come to me and speak of it. I wish to know more of what she has gleaned. Verity’s thought quivered with excitement. It unsettled me.

  “I think you should take your idea to the King-in-Waiting and discuss it with him,” I dutifully suggested to her.

  She was silent a long time. When she spoke, her voice was pitched very low, for my ears alone. “I think not. He will consider it another one of my foolishnesses. He will listen for a bit, and then begin to look at the maps on the wall, or move things about on his table as he waits for me to finish so he can smile and nod and send me on my way. Again. ” Her voice hoarsened on the last word. She brushed the hair back from her face, then brushed at her eyes again. She turned from me to look out over the sea again, as distant as Verity when he Skilled.

  She’s crying?

  I could not conceal from Verity my annoyance that this surprised him.

  Bring her to me. Now, at once!

  “My queen?”

  “A moment. ” Kettricken looked aside from me. With her face away from me, she pretended to be scratching her nose. I knew she brushed at tears.

  “Kettricken?” I ventured the familiarity as I had not for months. “Let us go to him now with this idea. At once. I will go with you. ”

  She spoke hesitantly, not turning to look at me. “You do not think it is foolish?”

  I would not lie, I reminded myself. “I think that as things stand, we must consider any possible sources of aid. ” As I spoke the words I found I believed them. Had not both Chade and the Fool hinted, no, pleaded for this very idea? Perhaps Verity and I were the ones who were shortsighted.