by Robin Hobb
I hastened up the path until I was on the heels of a group of musicians who had come in before me. I followed them around to the back of the manorhouse. I knelt to refasten my boot as they asked directions and then straightened up just in time to follow them inside. I found myself in a small entry hall, cool and almost dark after the heat and light of the afternoon sun. I trailed them down a corridor. The minstrels talked and laughed among themselves as they hastened on. I slowed my steps and dropped back. When I passed a door that was ajar on an empty room, I stepped into it and shut the door quietly behind me. I drew a deep breath and looked around.
I was in a small sitting room. The furniture was shabby and ill-matched, so I surmised it was for servants or visiting craftsmen. I could not count on being alone there for long. There were, however, several large cupboards along the wall. I chose one that was not in direct view of the door should it open suddenly, and quickly rearranged its contents in order to sit inside it. I ensconced myself with the door slightly ajar for some light and went to work. I inspected and organized my vials and packets of poisons. I treated both my belt knife and my sword’s edge with poison, then resheathed them carefully. I arranged my sword to hang outside my trousers. Then I made myself comfortable and settled down to wait.
Days seemed to pass before dusk gave way to full dark. Twice folk briefly entered the room, but from their gossip I gathered that every servant was busy preparing for the gathering tonight. I passed the time by imagining how Regal would kill me if he caught me. Several times I almost lost my courage. Each time I reminded myself that if I walked away from this, I would have to live with the fear forever. Instead, I tried to prepare myself. If Regal were here, then his coterie would surely be close by. I put myself carefully through the exercises Verity had taught me to shield my mind from other Skilled ones. I was horribly tempted to venture out with a tiny touch of the Skill, to see if I could sense them. I refrained. I doubted I could sense them without betraying myself. And even if I could so detect them, what would it tell me that I did not already know? Better to concentrate on guarding myself from them. I refused to allow myself to think specifically of what I would do, lest they pick up traces of my thoughts. When finally the sky outside the window was full black and pricked with stars, I slipped out from my hiding place and ventured out into the hallway.
Music drifted on the night. Regal and his guests were at their festivities. I listened for a moment to the faint notes of a familiar song about two sisters, one of whom drowned the other. To me, the wonder of the song was not a harp that would play by itself, but a minstrel who would find a woman’s body, and be inspired to make a harp of her breastbone. Then I put it out of my mind and concentrated on business.
I was in a simple corridor, stone-floored and panelled with wood, lit with torches set at wide intervals. Servants’ area, I surmised; it was not fine enough for Regal or his friends. That did not make it safe for me, however. I needed to find a servants’ stair and get myself to the second floor. I crept along the hall. I went from door to door, pausing to listen outside each one. Twice I heard folk within, women talking together in one, the clack of a weaving frame being used in another. The quiet doors that were not locked, I opened briefly. They were workrooms for the most part, with several given over to weaving and sewing. In one, a suit of fine blue fabric was pieced out on a table, ready for sewing. Regal apparently still indulged his fondness for fine clothing.
I came to the end of the corridor and peered around the corner. Another hallway, much finer and wider. The plastered ceiling overhead had been imprinted with fern shapes. Again I crept down a corridor, listening outside doors, cautiously peeping into some of them. Getting closer, I told myself. I found a library, with more vellum books and scrolls than I had ever known existed. I paused in one room where brightly-plumed birds in extravagant cages dozed on their perches. Slabs of white marble had been set to hold ponds of darting fishes and water lilies. There were benches and cushioned chairs set about gaming tables there. Small cherrywood tables scattered about held Smoke censers. I had never even imagined such a room.
I eventually came to a proper hall with framed portraits along the walls and a floor of gleaming black slate. I drew back when I spotted the guard and stood silent in an alcove until his bored pacing carried him past me. Then I slipped out to flit past all those mounted nobles and simpering ladies in their sumptuous frames.
I blundered out into an antechamber. There were hangings on the wall and small tables supporting statuary and vases of flowers. Even the torch sconces here were more ornate. There were small portraits in gilt frames to either side of a fireplace with an elaborate mantel. Chairs were set close together for intimate talk. The music was louder here, and I could hear laughter and voices as well. Despite the lateness of the hour, the merriment went on. On the opposite wall were two tall carved doors. They led to the gathering hall where Regal and his nobles danced and laughed. I pulled myself back around the corner as I saw two servants in livery enter from a door to my far left. They bore trays carrying an assortment of incense pots. I surmised they were to replace ones that had burned out. I stood frozen, listening to their footsteps and conversation. They opened the tall doors and the music of harps spilled out more loudly and the narcotic scent of Smoke. Both were quenched by the closing doors. I ventured to peep out again. All was clear before me, but behind me –
‘What do you here?’
My heart fell into my boots, but I forced a sheepish smile to my face as I turned to face the guard who had entered the room behind me. ‘Sir, I’ve lost my way in this great maze of a house,’ I said guilelessly.
‘Have you? That doesn’t explain why you wear a sword within the King’s walls. All know weapons are forbidden save to the King’s own guard. I saw you sneaking about just then. Did you think with the merrymaking going on, you could just slip about and fill your pockets with whatever you found, thief?’
I stood frozen with terror, watching the man approach me. I am sure he believed he had discovered my purpose from the stricken look on my face. Verde would never have smiled so if he thought he advanced on a man he had helped beat to death in a dungeon. His hand rested carelessly on the hilt of his own blade and he grinned confidently. He was a handsome man, very tall and fair as many of the Farrow folk were. The badge he wore was Mountwell of Farrow’s golden oak, with the Farseer buck overleaping it. So Regal had modified his coat of arms as well. I but wished he’d left the buck off it.
A part of me noticed all these things as another part relived the nightmare of being dragged to my feet by my shirt front and stood up, so that this man could strike me and drive me once more to the floor. He was not Bolt, the one who had broken my nose. No, Verde had followed him, beating me insensible a second time, after Bolt had left me too battered to stand on my own. He had towered over me then and I had cowered and flinched away from him, tried vainly to scrabble away from him over the cold stone floor that was already spattered with my blood. I remembered the oaths he had laughingly uttered each time he had had to haul me to my feet so he could hit me again. ‘By Eda’s tits,’ I muttered to myself, and with the words, fear died in me.
‘Let’s see what you have in that pouch,’ he demanded, and came closer.
I could not show him the poisons in my pouch. No way to explain those away. No amount of smooth lying would let me escape this man. I would have to kill him.
Suddenly it was all so simple.
We were much too close to the gathering hall. I wished no sound to alarm or alert anyone. So I retreated from him, a slow step at a time, backing in a wide circle that took me into the chamber I had just left. The portraits looked down at us as I backed hesitantly away from the tall guardsman.
‘Stand still!’ he ordered, but I shook my head wildly in what I hoped was a convincing display of terror. ‘I said, stand still, you scrawny little thief!’ I glanced quickly over my shoulder, then back at him, desperate, as if I were trying to find the courage to turn and run from
him. The third time I did so, he leaped for me.
I’d been hoping for that.
I sidestepped him and then drove my elbow savagely into the small of his back, adding just enough momentum to his charge that he went to his knees. I heard them smack bonily against the stone floor. He gave a wordless roar of both anger and pain. I could see how suddenly furious it made him for the scrawny thief to dare strike him. I silenced him sharply when I kicked him under the chin, clacking his mouth shut. I was grateful that I’d switched back to my boots. Before he could make another sound I had my knife out and across his throat. He gurgled his amazement and lifted both hands in a vain attempt to contain that warm gushing of blood. I stood over him, looking down into his eyes. ‘FitzChivalry,’ I told him quietly. ‘FitzChivalry.’ His eyes widened in sudden understanding and terror, then lost all expression as life left him. Abruptly he was stillness and nothingness, as devoid of life as a stone. To my Wit sense, he had disappeared.
So quickly it was done. Vengeance. I stood looking down at him, waiting to feel triumph or relief, or satisfaction. Instead I felt nothing, felt as lost to all life as he was. He was not even meat I could eat. I wondered belatedly if there was somewhere a woman who had loved this handsome man, blonde children who depended on his wages for food. It is not good for an assassin to have such thoughts; they had never plagued me when I had carried out the King’s Justice for King Shrewd. I shook them from my head.
He was making a very large puddle of blood on the floor. I had silenced him quickly but this was just the sort of mess I hadn’t wished to make. He was a large man, and he’d had a lot of blood in him. My mind raced as I debated whether to take time to conceal the body, or to accept that he would be quickly missed by his fellow guards and use that discovery as a diversion.
In the end I took off my shirt and sopped up as much of the blood as I could with it. Then I dumped it on his chest and wiped my bloody hands on his shirt. I seized him by the shoulders and dragged him out of the portrait hall, all the time almost shuddering with the effort of straining my senses to be aware of anyone coming. My boots kept slipping on the polished floors and the sound of my panting breath was a roar to my ears. Despite my efforts at mopping up the blood, we left a sheen of red on the floors behind us. At the door to the room of birds and fish, I forced myself to listen well before entering. I held my breath and tried to ignore the pounding of my heart in my ears. The room was clear of humans, however. I shouldered the door open and dragged Verde in. Then I caught him up and tumbled him into one of the stone fish pools. The fish darted frantically as his blood trailed and swirled out into the clear water. I hastily rinsed my hands and chest clean of blood in another pond, and then left by a different door. They’d follow the blood trail here. I hoped they’d take some time puzzling as to why the killer had dragged him here and dumped him in a pond.
I found myself in an unfamiliar room. I glanced quickly about at the vaulted ceiling and panelled walls. There was a grandiose chair on a dais at the far end. Some kind of an audience chamber then. I glanced about to get my bearings, then froze where I was. The carved doors to my far right swung suddenly open. I heard laughter, a muttered question and a giggling response. There was no time to hide and nothing to shelter behind. I flattened myself against a wall hanging and was still. The group entered on a wave of laughter. There was a note of helplessness in the laughter that told me they were either drunk or giddy with Smoke. They walked right past me, two men vying for the attention of a woman who simpered and tittered behind a tasselled fan. All three of them were dressed entirely in shades of red, and one of the men had tinkling silver charms not just at the lace of his cuffs, but all along his loose sleeves to his elbows. The other man carried a small censer of Smoke on an ornamented rod, almost like a sceptre. He swung it back and forth before them as they walked so that they were always wreathed in the sweetish fumes. I doubted that they would have noticed me even if I had leaped out before them turning cartwheels. Regal seemed to have inherited his mother’s fondness for intoxicants, and to be turning it into a court fashion. I stood motionless until they had passed. They went into the fish-and-bird room. I wondered if they would notice Verde in the pond. I doubted it.
I flitted to the doorway from which the courtiers had entered, and slipped through it. I found myself suddenly in a great entry hall. It was floored with marble and my mind boggled at the expense of hauling such an expanse of stone to Tradeford. The ceiling was high and plastered white, with designs of immense flowers and leaves pressed into the plaster. There were arched windows of stained glass, dark now against the night, but between them hung tapestries glowing with such rich colours as to seem windows on some other world and time. All was illuminated with ornate candelabra hung with sparkling crystals and suspended from gilded chains. Hundreds of candles burned in them. Statues were displayed on pedestals at intervals about the room and from the look of them, most were of Regal’s Mountwell ancestors from his mother’s side. Despite the danger I was in, the grandness of the room captured me for a moment. Then I lifted my eyes and saw the wide staircase ascending. This was the main staircase, not the back servants’ stairs I had sought. Ten men abreast could have gone up it easily. The woodwork of the balustrades was dark and full of twirling knots, but shone with a deep lustre. A thick rug spilled down the centre of the steps like a blue cascade.
The hall was empty, as was the staircase. I did not give myself time to hesitate, but slipped silently across the room and up the stairs. I was halfway up when I heard the scream. Evidently they had noticed Verde. At the top of the first landing, I heard voices and running footsteps coming from the right. I fled to the left. I came to a door, pressed my ear against it, heard nothing, and slipped inside, all in less time than it takes to tell it. I stood in darkness, heart thundering, thanking Eda and El and any other gods that might exist that the door had not been fastened.
I stood in the darkness, my ear pressed to the thick door, trying to hear more than my own pounding heart. I heard shouts from below, and boots running down the staircase. A moment or so passed, then I heard an authoritative voice shouting orders. I slipped to where the opening door would at least temporarily conceal me, and waited, breath stilled, hands trembling. Fear welled up in me like a sudden blackness, threatening to overwhelm me. I felt the floor rock under me and I crouched down quickly to keep from falling in a faint. The world spun about me. I made myself small, hugging myself tight and squeezing my eyes shut, as if somehow that would better conceal me. A second wave of fear washed over me. I sank the rest of the way to the floor and fell over on my side, all but whimpering. I curled in a ball, enduring a terrible squeezing pain in my chest. I was going to die. I was going to die and I’d never see them again, not Molly, not Burrich, not my king. I should have gone to Verity. I knew that now. I should have gone to Verity. I wanted to scream and weep, for I was suddenly certain I could never escape, that I would be found and tortured. They would find me and kill me very, very slowly. I experienced an almost overwhelming drive simply to leap up and run out of the room, to draw sword against the guards and force them to end me quickly.
Steady now. They try to trick you into betraying yourself. Verity’s Skilling was finer than a cobweb. I caught my breath, but had the wisdom to keep still.
After what seemed a long time, my blind terror lifted. I took a long shuddering breath and seemed to come to myself again. When I heard the footsteps and voices outside the door, my fear surged up again, but I forced myself to lie still and listen.
‘I was sure of it,’ said a man.
‘No. He’s long gone. If they find him at all, they’ll find him out on the grounds. No one could have stood up to both of us. If he were still in the house, we would have flushed him out.’
‘I tell you, there was something.’
‘Nothing,’ insisted the other voice with some annoyance. ‘I sensed nothing.’
‘Check again,’ insisted the other.
‘No. It’s a waste of time.
I think you were mistaken.’ The first man’s anger was becoming obvious despite their subdued voices.
‘I hope I was, but I fear I am not. If I am correct, we’ve given Will the excuse he’s been looking for.’ There was anger in the second man’s voice too, but also a whining self-pity.
‘Looking for an excuse? Not that one. He speaks ill of us to the King at every turn. To hear him talk, you would think he was the only one who had made any sacrifices in King Regal’s service. A maidservant told me yesterday that he makes no niceties at all about it any more. You, he says, are fat, and me he accuses of every weakness of the flesh a man can have.’
‘If I am not as lean as a soldier, it is because I am not a soldier. It is not my body that serves the King, but my mind. As well look to himself before he faults us, him with his one good eye.’ The whine was unmistakable now. Burl, I suddenly realized. Burl speaking to Carrod.
‘Well. I am satisfied that tonight at least he cannot fault us. There is nothing amiss here that I can find. He has you jumping at shadows and seeing danger in every corner. Calm yourself. This is a matter for the guards now, not us. They’ll probably find it was done by a jealous husband or another guardsman. I’ve heard it said that Verde won a little too often at dice. Perhaps that is why he was left in the gaming room. So if you will excuse me, I will return to the fairer company from which you distracted me.’