by Robin Hobb
‘Where are we? I want to go home,’ he mumbled. I ignored him and stole through into the Prince’s chamber. There I helped myself to a pitcher of wash water and a basin and drying cloths. There was a platter of food on the table. I was not sure exactly what it was, but took several pieces of a dark, sticky stuff cut in squares, and an oily-looking cake covered with seed. I also took a bottle of what I thought was wine and a cup.
Thick had toppled over on his bed. Painstakingly I hauled him upright again. Despite his groaning protests I made him wash his face and hands. I wished that I had a tub to put him in, for he smelled strongly of his days of sickness. Then I forced food down him, and a glass of the wine. He complained and snivelled until he hiccupped. Once I felt him marshal his Skill-strength against me but it was a weak and childish swipe that did not even challenge my walls. I pulled off his tunic and shoes and put him to bed. ‘The room is still moving,’ he muttered petulantly. Then he closed his eyes and was still. A few moments later he gave a great sigh, stretched out in the bed and fell into a true sleep. I closed my own eyes and cautiously tiptoed into his dream. The kitten slept in a tiny curled ball upon the embroidered pillow. He felt safe. I opened my eyes, suddenly so weary that I could have cast myself down on the floor and slept where I fell.
I didn’t. Instead I used what was left of the clean water. I sampled the food, found it unpalatable and ate it anyway. The oily one was probably intended to be some sort of sweet; the other tasted strongly of fish paste. The ‘wine’ was something fermented from fruit; other than that, I had few ideas about it. It didn’t quite take away the fish taste from my mouth. Then, armed with the basin of soiled water, I left the chamber to venture out into our lodgings. If anyone questioned me, I was simply looking for a place to dump the slops.
The building was as much stronghold as clan residence. We were on the highest floor, and I heard no sounds of other occupants. The interior walls featured carved and painted boars and tusk motifs. The other doors on the hall were not locked. They seemed to alternate between small chambers such as Thick had and larger ones, more generously furnished. None of them met the Buckkeep standard for guest housing even for lesser nobles. I reserved judgment on that. I doubted they intended to insult us: I knew the Outislanders had different customs for hospitality than the Six Duchies did. Generally speaking, houseguests were expected to provide their own victuals and comforts. We had come here knowing that. The wine and food in the Prince’s room seemed to be a nod to the Six Duchies hospitality the Narcheska’s entourage had enjoyed at Buckkeep. There were no signs of any servants on this upper floor, and I doubted that any would be supplied to us.
The next floor down seemed much the same. These rooms smelled as if they had been recently used; odours of smoke, food and, in one case, wet dog lingered in them. I wondered if they had been vacated for our use. The chambers here were slightly smaller, and the windows were of oiled skin rather than glass. Heavy wooden shutters, some bearing the old scars of arrows, offered protection from any determined assault. Evidently the highest chambers were accorded to those of highest ranks; very different from the Six Duchies, where servants were given the upper rooms so that nobility need not climb too many flights of steps. I had just closed a door when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. An ant trail of servants suddenly appeared, bearing belongings, comforts and victuals for their Six Duchies masters. They halted in confusion, milling in the hallway, and one asked me, ‘How do we know which chamber is for who?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I replied pleasantly. ‘I’m not even certain where we are to dump slops.’
I slipped away from them, leaving them to sort out the rooms, suspecting that the best ones would go to the nobles with the most aggressive servants. On the ground floor I found a back door that led out to a waste pit behind the privies and dumped my water there. Another door led down a corridor to a large kitchen where several young Outislander men were tending a large roast on a spit, chopping potatoes and onions, and kneading bread. They seemed intent on their tasks and all but ignored me as I peered in at them. A quick tour of the outside of the building showed me that a second, much grander door led to a large open hall that made up much of the ground floor of the building. These doors stood open to admit both light and air. Within, I glimpsed what was undoubtedly the welcome gathering for the Prince. I abandoned my basin in the deep grass at one end of the building, and hastily straightened my uniform and smoothed back my hair into a tail.
Unnoticed, I slipped into the back of the room. My fellow guardsmen were ranged against the wall. They looked as alert as men do when they are stiflingly bored and ignored. In truth, there seemed little for them to guard against.
The large room was long and low ceilinged. The main part of it was taken up with benches, all of a height and all full of seated men. There was no throne or dais of any kind. Nor were the benches oriented to focus attention on one person. Rather, they ringed the room, leaving the centre open. A bowed old kaempra, or war leader of the Fox Clan was speaking. His short jacket was fringed with the tips of fox tails, white as his unruly hair. He was missing three fingers on his sword hand, but wore a necklace of his enemies’ fingerbones to compensate. He tugged at them nervously as he spoke, glancing often at Bloodblade as if reluctant to give offence and yet too angry to keep silent. I only caught his closing words. ‘No one clan can speak for all of us! No one clan has the right to bring bad luck down on us all.’
As I watched, the Fox kaempra nodded gravely to each corner of the room and then retired to his bench. Another man stood and made his way to the centre and began speaking. I saw the Prince and Lord Chade seated amongst the nobles who attended him in one section of the benches. His Wit-coterie was ranged behind him. The Hetgurd, for so I recognized this assembly – the gathering of the warrior leaders of the clans – had accorded my prince no indication of his rank. Here, he was seated as a warrior leader among his warriors, just as the other clan warrior-leaders were. This was a gathering of equals, come together to discuss the Narcheska’s betrothal. Did they see him so? I tried not to scowl at the thought.
All this I grasped in the time it took my eyes to adjust to the dimness of the hall after the summer sunshine outside. I found a piece of wall to lean on next to Riddle in the back row of guardsmen. Riddle spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘Not like us at all, my friend. No feast or gifts or songs to welcome our Prince. Just a how-d’ye-do greeting on the docks and then they brought him straight here and began discussing the betrothal. Right to business for these people. Some don’t like the idea of one of their women leaving her motherlands to go live in the Six Duchies. They think it’s unnatural and probably bad luck. But most don’t care much about that, one way or another. They seem to think that would be Clan Narwhal’s bad luck, not theirs. The real sticking point is the dragon-slaying bit.’
I nodded to his swift summary. Chade had a good man in Riddle. I wondered where he had recruited him and then focused my attention on the man who was speaking. I noticed now that he stood in the middle of a ring painted on the floor. It was intricate and stylized, and yet still recognizable as a serpent grasping its own tail. The man did not give his name before he began speaking. Perhaps he assumed that everyone knew it, or perhaps the only important part of his identity was the sea otter tattooed on his forehead. He spoke simply, without anger, as if explaining something obvious to rather stupid children.
‘Icefyre is not a cow that belongs to any one of us. He is not cattle to be offered as part of a bride price. Even less does he belong to the foreigner Prince. How then can he offer the head of a creature that does not belong to him as payment to the Blackwater Mothershouse of the Narwhal Clan? We can only see his promise in one of two ways. Either he has made his offer in ignorance, or it is an affront to us.’
He paused then and made a strange gesture with his hand. In a moment its meaning was made clear as Prince Dutiful slowly stood and then came to join him in the speaker’s circle. ‘No, Kaempra Otter.’ Dutif
ul addressed him as warrior-leader for his clan. ‘It was not ignorance. It was not intended as affront. The Narcheska presented this deed to me as a challenge to prove myself worthy of her.’ The Prince lifted his hands and let them fall helplessly. ‘What could I do but accept it? If a woman issued such a challenge to you, saying before your gathered warriors, “accept it or admit cowardice”, what would you do? What would any of you do?’
Many heads in the assembly nodded to this. Dutiful nodded gravely back to them and then added, ‘So what am I to do now? My word has been given, before your warriors and mine, in the hall of my parents. I have said I will attempt to do this thing. I know of no honourable way to unsay such words. Is there a custom here, among the people of the Narcheska, that allows a man to call back the words that have issued from his mouth?’
The Prince moved his hands, imitating the same gesture that the Otter kaempra had used to cede him the speaker’s circle. He bowed to the four corners of the hall, and then retreated to his bench again. As he took his seat, Otter spoke again.
‘If this was the manner of your accepting the challenge, then I will take no affront toward you. I reserve what I think of clan Blackwater’s daughter for issuing such a challenge. Regardless of the circumstances.’
I had previously noticed Peottre Blackwater sitting almost by himself on one of the front benches. He scowled at the Otter’s remark but made no indication that he wished to speak. The Narcheska’s father, Arkon Bloodblade, sat a small distance away from Peottre, his Boar warriors ranked about him. Arkon’s brow remained smooth, as if the rebuke had nothing to do with him, and perhaps by his lights that was correct. The Otter had rebuked Elliania as a daughter of the Blackwater family of the Narwhal Clan. Arkon Bloodblade was a Boar. Here, within his own people, he assumed the role that they expected of him. He was only the Narcheska’s father. Her mother’s brother, Peottre Blackwater, was responsible for the quality of her upbringing.
When the silence had stretched enough that it was obvious no one would offer a defence for what the Narcheska had done, the Otter leader cleared his throat. ‘It is true that as a man you cannot call back your word, Prince of the Farseer Buck Clan. You have said you will try to do this thing, and I will concede that you must do it, or be judged no man at all.
‘Yet that does not release us of the Out Islands of our duties. Icefyre is ours. What do our great mothers tell us? He came to us, in the years before years were counted, and asked asylum from his grief. Our wise women granted it to him. And in return for our sheltering, he promised that his protection should be ours. We know the power of his spirit and the invulnerability of his flesh, and fear little that you shall slay him. But if, by some strange twist of fate, you manage to do him injury, on whom will his anger fall after he has killed you? On us.’ He turned slowly in a circle as he spoke, including all the clans as he warned them, ‘If Icefyre is ours, we also belong to him. Like a kin pledge we should see the debt woven between us. If his blood is shed, must not we shed blood in return? If, as his kin, we fail to come to his aid, cannot he exact from us the blood price ten times over, according to our law? This Prince must honour his word as a man. That is so. But after, must not war come to us again, regardless of whether he lives or dies?’
I saw Arkon Bloodblade draw a long slow breath. I noted now what I had not before, that he held his hand in a certain way, open yet with the fingers pointing toward his sternum. Several men, I now saw, were making the same gesture. A request to speak? Yes, for when the Otter warrior made the now familiar gesture, Bloodblade stood and came to take the man’s place in the circle.
‘None of us want war again. Not here in the God Runes, nor in the Prince’s farmers’ fields across the water. Yet a man’s word must be satisfied. And though we all be men here, there is a woman’s will in this as well. What warrior can stand before a woman’s will? What sword can cut her stubbornness? To women Eda has given the islands themselves, and we walk upon them only by her leave. It is not for men to set aside the challenge of a woman, lest our own mothers say, “you do not respect the flesh you sprang from. Walk no more on the earth that Eda has granted us. Be abandoned by us, with only water under your keel and never sand under your feet.” Is that easier than war? We are caught between a man’s word and a woman’s will. Neither can be broken without disgrace to all.’
I had understood Bloodblade’s words but the full import of their meaning escaped me. Obviously there was custom here we were not familiar with, and I questioned what we had blundered into with our matchmaking. Bleakly I wondered if we had not fallen into a trap. Was the Blackwater family of the Narwhal Clan intent on kindling war between the Six Duchies and the Out Islands? Had their offer of the Narcheska been a sham, to draw us into a situation in which regardless of the outcome, we had invited bloodshed yet again to our shores?
I studied Peottre Blackwater’s face. His expression was stolid and still, his eyes turned inward. He seemed impassive to the dilemma his sister-daughter had set us, and yet I felt he was not. I sensed rather that we balanced on the knife blade that had already cut deep into him. He looked, I suddenly thought, like a man without choices. A man who could no longer hope, because he knows that no action of his own can save him. He was waiting. He did not plan or plot. He had already done the task he had set out to do. Now he could only wait to see how other men would carry it out. I was certain I was right, and yet what I could not understand or even imagine was why. Why had he done it? Or, as her father had said, was it beyond his control, the will of a woman who might be younger than he was and dependent on him, and yet controlled who might walk on the earth of his mother-holdings?
I looked around me. There were simply too many differences between us, I decided. How could the Six Duchies ever make a peace with the Out Islands when our customs varied so widely? Yet, tradition had it that the Farseer line had its roots in the Out Islands, that Taker, the first Farseer monarch, had begun his life as an Out Island raider who had seen the log fortress that Buckkeep once was and decided to make it his own. Our lines and our ways had diverged far since those days. Peace and prosperity depended on us finding some common ground.
The likelihood of that did not seem great.
I lifted my eyes to find the Prince’s gaze fixed on me. I had not wanted to distract him before. Now I sent him a reassuring thought. Thick is resting in his chamber upstairs. He ate and drank before he went to sleep.
I wish I could be doing the same. They did not give me so much as a chance to wash my face before they convened the Hetgurd. And now it shows no sign of ending.
Patience, my prince. They’ll end this eventually. Even Outislanders must eat, drink, and sleep some time.
Do they piss, do you think? That’s starting to be a very immediate concern to me. I’ve thought of excusing myself quietly, but don’t know how it would be interpreted if I stood and walked out now.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I felt a fumbling Skill-touch. Thick?
It was Chade. I saw Dutiful start to reach out his hand, to touch Chade and add his strength to the old man’s. I stopped him. No. Don’t. Let him try it on his own. Chade, can you hear us?
Barely.
Thick is asleep upstairs. He ate and drank before he fell asleep.
Good. I sensed the effort he put into that brief reply. Nonetheless, I was grinning. He was doing it.
Stop. Silly grin. He scolded me. He looked around the room gravely. Bad situation. Need time to think. Need to stop this before it goes too far without us.
I made my face solemn. The expression was far more in keeping with that of those around me. Arkon Bloodblade was surrendering the speaking circle to a man who wore an Eagle badge. They paused to clasp wrists in a warrior’s greeting before the Eagle entered the circle. The Eagle kaempra was an old man, possibly the oldest man in the assembly. Grey and white streaked his thinning hair, yet he still moved like a warrior. He stared around at us accusingly, and then spoke abruptly, the ends of his words softened b
y his missing teeth.
‘Doubtless a man must do what he has said he will do. It wastes our day to even discuss that. And men must honour their kinship bonds. If this foreign Prince came here and said, “I have promised a woman that I would kill Orig of the Eagle Clan”, all of you would say, “Then you must try, if you have promised to do it”. But we would also say, “But know that some of us have kinship bonds with Orig. And we will kill you before we let you do this thing.” And we would expect the Prince to accept that as obviously correct, also.’ His slow gaze travelled the assembly disdainfully. ‘I smell merchants and traders here, who used to be warriors and honourable men. Shall we sniff after Six Duchies goods like a dog grovelling after a bitch? Will you trade your own kin for brandy and summer apples and red wheat? Not this Eagle.’
He gave a snort of contempt for all who thought there was any need of more discussion, left the circle and crabbed back to sit amongst his warriors. A silence fell as we all pondered his words. Some exchanged glances: I sensed the old man had cut close to the bone. There were many here uneasy at the thought of letting the Prince kill their dragon, but they were also hungry for peace and trade. War with the Six Duchies had cut them off from all trade from points south of us. Now the Chalcedean quarrel with the Bingtown Traders was throttling that route. If they did not gain free trade with the Six Duchies, they would have to forgo all goods and luxuries that warmer countries could provide for them. It was not a thought to relish. Yet no one there could oppose the Eagle’s stance without taking the name of greedy trader to himself.
We have to end this somehow. Now, before anyone adds their spoken approval to his words. Chade’s thin Skilling sounded desperate.