by Robin Hobb
“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 horror-struck.
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 Skill-strength 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 were 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.
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“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 bareback. He crowhopped 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.
He trusted me, did that good horse so well trained by Burrich. I took him away from the torchlit carriage path and the cleared walkways, fleeing through flowerbeds and plantings, before racing out past a huddle of guards at one of the tradefolk’s gates. They had been watching up the path, but Arrow and I came thundering across the turf and were out the gate before they knew what we were about. They’d wear stripes for that tomorrow, if I knew Regal at all.
Beyond the gate, we once more cut across the gardens. Behind us, I could hear shouts of pursuit. Arrow answered my knees and weight very well for a horse that was used to a rein. I convinced him to push through a hedge and out onto a side road. We left the King’s Gardens behind us, and kept our gallop up through the better section of town over cobbled streets where torches still burned. But soon we left the fine houses behind as well. We thundered along past inns still lit for travelers, past shops dark and shuttered for the night, Arrow’s hooves thudding on the clay roads. As late as it was, there was little movement on the streets. We raced through them as unchecked as the wind.
I let him slow as we reached the commoner section of town. Here street torches were more widely spaced and some had already burned out for the night. Still, Arrow sensed my urgency and kept up a respectable pace. Once I heard another horse, ridden hard, and for a moment I thought the pursuit had found us. Then a messenger passed us by, heading the opposite direction, without even checking his horse’s pace. I rode on and on, always fearing to hear horses behind us, waiting for the sounds of horns.
Just when I began to think we had eluded pursuit, I discovered that Tradeford held one more horror for me. I entered what had once been the Great Circle Market of Tradeford. In the earliest days of the city, it had been the heart of it, a wonderful great open market where a man might stroll and find goods from every corner of the known world on display.
How it had degenerated from that to Regal’s King’s Circle I have never exactly been
able to discover. I only knew that as I rode through the great open circle of the market, Arrow snorted at the smell of old blood on the cobbles under his hooves. The old gallows and the whipping posts were still there, elevated now for the benefit of the crowd, along with other mechanical devices whose uses I had no wish to understand. No doubt those in the new King’s Circle would be even more imaginatively cruel. I kneed Arrow and passed them all with a chill shudder and a prayer to Eda that I be preserved from them.
Then a twist of feeling writhed through the air, wrapped itself around my thoughts and bent them. For a heart-thudding moment, I thought that Will reached after me with the Skill and sought to drive me mad. But my Skill walls were as stout as I knew how to raise, and I doubt that Will or anyone else would be soon able to Skill after Verity’s blast. No. This was worse. This came from a deeper, more primal source, as insidious as clear water that was poisoned. It flowed into me, hatred and pain and stifling claustrophobia and hunger all rolled into one dreadful longing for freedom and revenge. It reawakened everything I had ever felt in Regal’s dungeons.
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It came from the cages. A great stench came from the row of them at the edge of the circle, a stench of infected wounds and urine and rotted meat. Yet even that affront to my nose was not as great as the press of hell-tinged Wit that emanated from them. They held insane beasts, the creatures kept to savage the human criminals and Forged ones that Regal threw to them. There was a bear, heavily muzzled despite the bars he paced behind. There were two great cats of a kind I had never seen, in agony from the broken fangs and torn claws they had wasted on the bars, and yet stubbornly battling their prisons still. There was an immense black bull with a great sweep of horns. This last animal’s flesh was studded with ribboned darts sunken in wounds that festered and oozed pus down his hide. Their misery dinned at me, clamoring for relief, yet I did not need to stop to see the heavy chains and locks that secured each cage. Had I had a pick, I might have tried to cheat the locks. Had I had meat or grain, I might have freed them with poison. But I had neither of those things, and even less of time. So I rode past them, until the wave of their madness and agony crested over and drenched me.
I pulled in on the reins. I could not leave them behind. But, Come to me, the command surged through me, Skill-graven. It was not endurable to disobey it. I set my heels to jittering Arrow and left them behind, tallying up to Regal’s account yet another debt that someday I would settle.
True light found us finally on the outskirts of town. I had never imagined that Tradeford was so large. We came to a slow stream feeding into the river. I pulled Arrow in, then dismounted and led him down to the waterside. I let him drink a bit, then walked him for a while, then let him drink some more. The whole time my mind seethed with a thousand thoughts. They were probably searching the roads that led south, expecting me to head back to Buck. I had a good lead on them now; as long as I kept moving, I had a good chance of escape. I recalled my cleverly stashed bundle that would never be reclaimed. My winter clothes, my blanket, my cloak, all lost to me. I wondered suddenly if Regal would blame Hands for my stealing the horse. I kept recalling the look in Hands’ eyes before he fled me. I found myself being glad I had not yielded to the temptation to track Molly down. It was hard enough to see that horror and disgust in the face of a friend. I never wanted to see it in her eyes. I recalled again the dumb agony of the beasts that my Wit made me witness. Such thoughts were pushed aside by my frustration that my attempt on Regal had been thwarted, and the wondering if they would detect the poisons I had used on his clothes, or if I might yet succeed at killing him. Over all, thundering through me, was Verity’s command. Come to me, he had said, and I could not quite stop hearing those words. A small part of my mind was obsessed with them, nagged me even now not to waste my time in thinking or drinking, but merely to get back on the horse and go, go to Verity, that he needed me, commanded me.
Yet stoop to drink I did, and it was while I was on my knees at the water’s edge that I noticed I wasn’t dead.
I wet the sleeve of the yellow shirt in the stream, then gently peeled the blood-caked fabric loose. The cut I had inflicted on myself was shallow, not much more than a long slice up my arm. It was sore, and angry to look at, but it did not appear poisoned. I recalled belatedly that I had used my knife to kill twice that night, and wiped it off at least once. There had probably been no more than a trace of poison left on it when I cut myself.
Like a morning dawning, hope suddenly gleamed for me. They’d be looking for a body by the road, or searching for a poisoned man hiding somewhere in the city, too ill by now to bestride a horse. The whole coterie had watched me poison myself, and must have sensed my complete belief in my imminent death. Could they convince Regal I was dying? I wouldn’t trust to that, but I could hope for it. I remounted and pushed swiftly on. We passed farmsteads, grainfields, and orchards. We passed farmers on carts, too, taking their crops to town. I rode clutching my arm to my chest, staring straight ahead. It would only be a matter of time before someone thought to question folk coming into town. Best to play my part.
Eventually we began to see stretches of unworked land, with sheep or haragar scattered across them in open pasturage. Shortly after noon, I did what I knew I had to do. I dismounted by a brushy creekside, let Arrow water again, and then turned his head back to Tradeford. “Back to the stables, boy,” I told him, and when he did not move, I clapped him soundly on the flank. “Go on, go back to Hands. Tell them all I’m dead somewhere. ” I pictured his manger for him, brimming with the oats I knew he loved. “Go on, Arrow. Go. ”
He snorted at me curiously, but then paced off. He paused once to look back at me, expecting me to come after him and catch him. “Go on!” I shouted at him, and stamped my foot. He startled at that, and then took off at his high-kneed trot, tossing his head. Scarcely even tired, that one. When he came back riderless to the stable, perhaps they’d believe I was dead. Perhaps they’d waste more time searching for a body instead of pursuing me. It was the best I could do to mislead them, and certainly better than riding the King’s own horse for all to see. Arrow’s hoofbeats were fading. I wondered if I’d ever again ride an animal that fine, let alone own one. It didn’t seem likely.
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Come to me. The command still echoed through my mind.
“I am, I am,” I muttered to myself. “After I hunt for something to eat and get some sleep. But I’m coming. ” I left the road and followed the creek up into deeper brush. I had a long and weary way to go, with little more than the clothes on my back.
10
Hiring Fair
SLAVERY IS A tradition in the Chalced States, and is at the heart of much of its economy. They claim prisoners taken in war are the major source of its slaves. However, a great portion of the slaves who escape to the Six Duchies tell tales of being taken in pirate raids against their native lands. Chalced’s official stance is that such raids do not occur, but Chalced also officially denies that they turn a blind eye to pirates operating from the Trade Islands. The two go hand in hand.
Slavery has never been commonly accepted in the Six Duchies. Many of the early border conflicts between Shoaks and the Chalced States had more to do with the slavery issue than actual boundary lines. Shoaks families refused to accept that soldiers wounded or captured in war would be kept the rest of their lives as slaves. Any battle that Shoaks lost was almost immediately followed by a second savage attack against the Chalced States to regain those lost in the first battle. In this way, Shoaks came to hold much land originally claimed by the Chalced States. The peace between the two regions is always uneasy. Chalced constantly brings complaint that the folk of Shoaks not only shelter runaway slaves, but encourage others to escape. No Six Duchies monarch has ever denied the truth of this.
My whole drive now was to reach Verity, somewhere beyond the Mountain Kingdom. To do it, I would have to cross all of Far
row first. It would not be an easy task. While the region along the Vin River is pleasant enough, the farther one travels from the Vin the more arid the countryside becomes. The arable stretches are given over to great fields of flax and hemp, but beyond these are vast stretches of open, uninhabited land. The interior of Farrow Duchy, while not a desert, is flat, dry country, used only by the nomadic tribes who move their herds across it, following the forage. Even they forsake it after the “green times” of the year are past, to congregate in temporary villages along rivers or near watering places. In the days that followed my escape from Tradeford Hall, I came to wonder why King Wielder had ever bothered to subjugate Farrow, let alone make it one of the Six Duchies. I knew that I had to strike away from the Vin, to head southwest toward Blue Lake, to cross vast Blue Lake, and then follow the Cold River to the hems of the Mountains. Yet it was not a journey for a lone man. And without Nighteyes, that was what I was.
There are no sizable cities in the interior, though there are rudimentary towns that subsist year-round near some of the springs that randomly dot the interior. Most of these survive by virtue of the trade caravans that pass near them. Trade does flow, albeit slowly, between the folk of Blue Lake and the Vin River, and by this same path do the goods of the Mountain folk come into Six Duchies hands. The obvious course was to somehow attach myself to one of those caravans. Yet what is obvious is not always easy.
When I had entered Tradeford town, I had looked to be the poorest type of beggar imaginable. I left it finely dressed, on one of the best animals ever bred at Buckkeep. But the moment after I had parted with Arrow, the gravity of my situation began to dawn on me. I had the clothing I had stolen and my leather boots, my belt and pouch, a knife and a sword, plus a ring and a medallion on a chain. In my pouch there were no coins left at all, though it did contain implements for fire making, a sharpening stone for my knife, and a good selection of poisons.
