by Robin Hobb
"It is time to stand up to them," she declared. "Because once you start putting it off, you never do it. Why should not this be the time?"
"Because I don't want you caught up in this. I don't want you hurt. I don't want people saying you are the Bastard's whore." I could barely force the words from my mouth.
Molly's head came up. "I have done nothing I'm ashamed of," she said evenly. "Have you?"
"No. But-"
" 'But.' Your favorite word," she said bitterly. She walked away from me.
"Molly!" I sprang after her, seized her by the shoulders.
She spun and hit me. Not a slap. A solid punch in the mouth that rocked me back and put blood in my mouth. She stood glaring, daring me to touch her again. I didn't. "I didn't say I wouldn't fight back. Only that I didn't want you caught up in it. Give me a chance to fight this my way," I said. I knew blood was running over my chin. I let her look at it. "Trust that given time, I can find them and make them pay. My way. Now. Tell me about the men. What they wore, how they rode. What did the horses look like? Did they speak like Buck folk, or Inlanders? Did they have beards? Could you tell the color of their hair, their eyes?"
I saw her trying to think, saw her mind veer away from thinking about it. "Brown," she said at last. "Brown horses, with black manes and tails. And the men talked like anybody else. One had a dark beard. I think.. It's hard to see face down in the dirt."
"Good. That's good," I told her, though she had told me nothing at all. She looked down, away from the blood on my face. "Molly," I said more quietly. "I won't be coming ... to your room. Not for a while. Because ..."
"You're afraid."
"Yes!" I hissed. "Yes, I'm afraid. Afraid they'll hurt you, afraid they'll kill you. To hurt me. I won't endanger you by coming to you."
She stood still. I could not tell if she was listening to me or not. She folded her arms across her chest, hugged herself..
"I love you too much to see that happen." My words sounded weak, even to myself.
She turned and walked away from me. She still hugged herself, as if to keep herself from flying apart. She looked very alone, in her draggled blue skirts with her proud head bowed. "Molly Redskirts," I whispered after her, but I could no longer see that Molly. Only what I had made of her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Neatbay
THE POCKED MAN Is the legendary harbinger of disaster for the folk of the Six Duchies. To see him, striding down the road, is to know that disease and pestilence will soon come to call. To dream of him is said to be a warning of a death to come. Often the tales of him show him appearing to those deserving of punishment, but sometimes he is used, most often in puppet shows, as a general omen of disaster to come. A marionette of the Pocked Man, hung dangling across the scenery, is a warning to all in the audience that soon they will witness a tragedy.
The days of winter dragged agonizingly slow. With every passing hour, I was braced for something to happen. I never walked into a room without surveying it first, ate no food I had not seen prepared, drank only the water I drew from the well myself. I slept poorly. The constant watchfulness told on me in a hundred ways. I was snappish to those who spoke to me casually, moody when I checked on Burrich, reticent with the Queen. Chade, the only one to whom I could have unburdened myself, did not summon me. I was miserably alone. I dared not go to Molly. I kept my visits to Burrich as brief as possible for fear of bringing my troubles down on him. I could not openly leave Buckkeep to spend time with Nighteyes, and I feared to leave by our secret way lest I be watched. I waited and I watched, but that nothing further happened to me became a sophisticated torture of suspense.
I did call on King Shrewd daily. I watched him dwindle before my eyes, saw the Fool become daily more morose, his humor more acid. I longed for savage winter weather to match my mood, but the skies continued blue and the winds calm. Within Buckkeep, the evenings were noisy with gaiety and revel. There were masked balls, and summonings of minstrels to compete for fat purses. The Inland Dukes and nobles ate well at Regal's table, and drank well with him late into the night.
"Like ticks on a dying dog," I said savagely to Burrich one day as I was changing the dressing on his leg for him. He had made comment that it was no trick to stay awake on his night guard duty at Kettricken's door, for the noise of the revelry would have made it difficult to sleep.
"Who's dying?" he asked.
"All of us. One day at a time, we're all dying. Did no one ever tell you that? But this is healing, and surprisingly well for all you've done to it."
He looked down at his bared leg and cautiously flexed it. The tissue pulled unevenly, but held. "Maybe the gash is closed up, but it doesn't feel healed inside," he observed. It was not a complaint. He lifted his brandy cup and drained it off. I eyed it narrowly. His days had a pattern now. Once he left Kettricken's door in the morning, he went to the kitchen and ate. Then he came back to his room and began drinking. After I appeared and helped him change the bandaging on his leg, he would drink until it was time for him to sleep. And wake up in the evening, just in time to eat and then go guard Kettricken's door. He no longer did anything in the stables. He had given them over to Hands, who went about looking as if the job were a punishment he hadn't deserved.
Every other day or so, Patience sent Molly up to tidy Burrich's room for him. I knew little of these visits other than that they happened, and that Burrich, surprisingly, tolerated them. I had mixed feelings about them. No matter how much Burrich drank, he always treated women graciously; yet the emptied brandy bottles in a row could not but remind Molly of her father. Still, I wished them to know one another. One day I told Burrich that Molly had been threatened because of her association with me. "Association?" he had asked sharply.
"Some few know that I care for her," I admitted gingerly.
"A man does not bring his problems down on a woman he cares for," he told me severely.
I had no reply to that. Instead I gave him the few details Molly had recalled about her attackers, but they suggested nothing to him. For a time he had stared off, right through the walls of his room. After a time he picked up his cup and drained it. He spoke carefully. "I am going to tell her that you are worried about her. I am going to tell her that if she fears danger, she must come to me. I am more in a position to deal with it." He looked up and met my eyes. "I am going to tell her that you are wise to stay away from her, for her sake." As he poured himself another drink he had added quietly to the tabletop, "Patience was right. And she was wise to send her to me."
I blanched to consider the fill implications of that statement. For once, I was smart enough to know when to be quiet. He drank his brandy down, then looked at the bottle. Slowly, he slid it across the table toward me. "Put that back on the shelf for me, will you?" he requested.
Animals and winter stores continued to be drained from Buckkeep. Some were sold off cheaply to Inland Duchies. The very finest of the hunting and riding horses were barged up the Buck, to an area near Turlake. Regal announced this as a plan to preserve our best breeding stock far from the ravages of the Red-Ships. The mutter of the folk in Buckkeep Town, so Hands told me, was that if the King could not hold his own castle, what hope was there for them? When a shipment of fine old tapestries and furniture were sent upriver as well, the murmur became that soon the Farseers would abandon Buckkeep entirely, without even a fight, without even waiting for an assault. I had the uncomfortable suspicion the rumor was correct.
Confined as I was to Buckkeep, I had little direct access to the talk of the common folk. A silence greeted my entry to the watchroom now. With, my restriction to the Keep had come gossip and speculation. The talk that had flown about me on the day I had failed to save the little girl from the Forged ones found new life. Few of the guard spoke to me of anything other than the weather or other pleasantries. While they did not make me a total pariah, I was banished from the easy conversations and rambling arguments that usually filled the watchroom. To talk to me had become bad
luck. I wouldn't inflict that on men and women I cared about.
I was still welcome about the stables, but I strove not to talk to any one person too much, or appear too close to any of the beasts. The stable workers were a morose lot these days. There was not enough work to busy them, so quarrels were more frequent. The stable hands were my major source of news and rumors. None of it was cheery. There were garbled stories of raids on Beams towns, gossip about brawls in the taverns and on the docks of Buckkeep Town, and accounts of folk moving south or inland as their means allowed. What talk there was of Verity and his quest was demeaning or ridiculing. Hope had perished. Like me, the folk of Buckkeep were waiting in suspense for disaster to come to their doorsteps.
We had a month of stormy weather, and the relief and rejoicing in Buckkeep were more destructive than the preceding period of tension had been. A waterfront tavern caught fire during an especially wild evening of revelry. The fire spread, and only the drenching rain that followed the gusting winds saved it from spreading to the dock warehouses. That would have been a disaster in more than one way, for as Regal drained the Keep warehouses of grain and supplies, folk in the town saw little reason to conserve what was left. Even if the Raiders never came to Buckkeep itself, I was resigned to short rations before the winter was out.
I woke one night to stark stillness. The howl of the storm winds and the rattling of rain had stilled. My heart sank. A terrible premonition filled me, and when I rose to a clear blue morning, my dread increased. Despite the sunny day, the atmosphere in the Keep was oppressive. Several times I felt the tickling of the Skill against my senses. It nearly drove me mad, for I did not know if it was Verity attempting better contact, or Justin and Serene prying. A late-afternoon visit to King Shrewd and the Fool disheartened me further. The King, wasted to little more than bones, was sitting up and smiling vaguely. He Skilled feebly toward me as I came in the door, and then greeted me with, "Ah, Verity, my lad. How did your sword lesson go today?" The rest of his conversation made as much sense. Regal appeared almost immediately after I arrived. He sat on a straight-backed chair, arms crossed on his chest, and looked at me. No words were exchanged between us. I could not decide if my silence were cowardice or self-restraint. I escaped him as soon as I decently could, despite a rebuking look from the Fool.
The Fool himself looked little better than the King. On so colorless a creature as the Fool, the dark circles under his eyes looked painted on. His tongue had grown as still as the clappers in his bells. When King Shrewd died, nothing would stand between the Fool and Regal. I wondered if there was any way I could aid him.
As if I could aid myself, I reflected sourly.
In the solitude of my room that evening, I drank more than I should of the cheap blackberry brandy that Burrich despised. I knew I would be sick from it tomorrow. I didn't care. Then I lay on my bed, listening to the distant sounds of merriment from the Great Hall. I wished Molly were there to scold me for being drunk. The bed was too large, the linens glacier white and cold. I closed my eyes and sought comfort in the company of a wolf. Confined as I was to ,the Keep, I had begun to seek his dream company on a nightly basis, just to have an illusion of freedom.
I came awake just before Chade seized me and shook me. It was good I had recognized him in that split instant, for otherwise I am sure I would have tried to kill him. "Up!" he whispered hoarsely. "Get up, you sodden fool, you idiot! Neatbay is under siege. Five Red-Ships. I wager they'll leave nothing standing if we delay. Get up, damn you!"
I staggered to my feet, the muzziness of drink giving way before the shock of his words.
"What can we do?" I asked stupidly.
"Tell the King. Tell Kettricken, tell Regal. Surely not even Regal can ignore this, it is at our very doorstep. If the Red-Ships take and hold Neatbay, they will have us bracketed. No ships will get out of Buck Harbor. Even Regal will see that. Now go! Go!"
I dragged on trousers and a tunic, ran for the door barefoot with my hair draggling about my face. I halted there. "How do I know this? Whence do I say this warning comes?"
Chade hopped up and down in frustration. "Damn and damn! Tell them anything! Tell Shrewd you had a dream of the Pocked Man scrying it in a pool of water! He at least should understand that! Tell them an Elderling brought you the news! Say anything, but get them to act and now!"
"Right!" I raced off down the hallway, skidded down the steps, and raced down the corridor to King Shrewd's chambers. I hammered on Shrewd's door. At the far end of the hall, Burrich stood beside his chair outside Kettricken's door. He looked at me, drew his short sword, and took a ready stance, eyes darting everywhere. "Raiders!" I called down the hall to him, not caring who overheard or how they reacted. "Five Red-Ships in Neatbay! Rouse Her Majesty, tell her they need our aid now!"
Burrich turned without a question to tap on Kettricken's door and be immediately admitted. It did not go so easily for me. Wallace finally opened the door a grudging crack, but would not budge until I suggested he should be the one to race down the stairs and inform Regal of my tidings. I believe it was the prospect of making a dramatic entrance and conferring with the Prince before all the merrymakers that decided him. He left the door unguarded as he hurried to his small antechamber to make himself presentable.
The King's bedchamber was in total darkness and heavy with the reek of Smoke. I took a candle from his sitting room, kindled it at the dwindling fire, and hastened in. In the darkness, I nearly trod upon the Fool, who was curled up like a cur at the King's bedside. I gaped in astonishment. He had not so much as a blanket or cushion for comfort, but huddled on the rug beside the King's bed. He uncurled stiffly, coming awake, and then alarmed in an instant. "What is it? What's happened?" he demanded.
"Raiders in Neatbay. Five Red-Ships. I have to rouse the King. What are you doing, sleeping here? Are you afraid to go back to your own room anymore?"
He laughed bitterly. "More like I fear to leave this one, lest I never be allowed in again. The last time Wallace locked me out, it took me an hour of yammering and hammering before the King realized I was missing and demanded to know where I was. The time before that, I slipped in with the breakfast things. The time before that-"
"They seek to separate you from the King?"
He nodded. "With honey or a whip. This night, Regal offered me a purse with five bits of gold in it, if I would make myself presentable and come down to entertain them. Oh, how he did go on after you had left, over how badly I was missed at the court below, and what a shame it was for me to waste my youth shut away up here. And when I said I found King Shrewd's company more congenial than that of other fools, he flung the teapot at me. Put Wallace in a fair bit of a huff, for he had just brewed up as nasty a mess of herb tea as would make one long for the perfume of farts."
The Fool had been kindling candles and poking up the fire on the King's hearth as we spoke. Now he drew back one of the heavy bed curtains. "My liege?" he said as gently as one might speak to a sleeping child. "FitzChivalry is here with important tidings for you. Will you awaken and hear him?"
At first the King made no response. "Your Majesty?" the Fool called to him again. He damped a cloth in a bit of cool water and patted the King's face with it. "King Shrewd?"
"My king, your folk have need of you." The words tumbled from me in desperation. "Neatbay is besieged by Red-Ships. Five of them. We must send aid now, or all is lost. Once they have a toehold there-"
"They could close Buck Harbor." The King's eyes opened as he spoke. He did not move from his prone position, but he squeezed his eyes more tightly shut as if clenching them against pain. "Fool. A bit of the red wine. Please." His voice was soft, scarce more than a breath, but it was the voice of my king. My heart surged as if I were an old dog hearing the voice of a returning master.
"What must we do?" I begged of him.
"Every ship we have, down the coast to them. Not just the warships. Roust out the fishing fleet. We fight for our lives now. How dare they come this close, how came
they to such boldness! Send horse overland. On their way tonight, within the hour, I say. They may not get there until day after tomorrow, but send them all the same. Put Keen in charge of it."
My heart flip-flopped in my chest. "Your Majesty," I broke in gently. "Keen is dead. Coming back from the mountains, with Burrich. They were attacked by highwaymen."
The Fool glared at me, and I instantly regretted my interruption. The command faded from King Shrewd"s voice. Uncertainly, he said, "Keen is dead?"
I took a breath. "Yes, Your Majesty. But there is Red. Kerf is also a good man."
The King took the wine the Fool proffered. He sipped, and seemed to draw strength with it. "Kerf. Give it to Kerf, then." A shade of the confidence came back. I bit my tongue against saying that what horse we had left was not worth sending. Doubtless the folk of Neatbay would welcome whoever came to reinforce them.
King Shrewd considered. "What is the word from South Cove? Have they sent out warriors and ships?"
"Your Majesty, there is no word from there as yet." This was not a lie.
"What goes on here?" The shouting began before he even reached the bedchamber. It was Regal, puffy with drink and fury. "Wallace!" He pointed an accusing finger at me. "Get him out of here. Get help to do it if you need it. You needn't be gentle! "
Wallace had not far to look. Two of Regal's brawny inland guardsmen had followed him up from the feasting. I was lifted off my feet; Regal had chosen burly men for this duty. I looked about for the Fool, for any ally, but the Fool had vanished. I caught a glimpse of a pale hand vanishing under the bed and resolutely looked away. I did not blame him. There was nothing he could do for me by staying except be thrown out with me.