Royal Assassin (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  The next thing I re­mem­ber is the shad­owy corners of the bed­room. I lay for a long time, not mov­ing or speak­ing. I went from a state of empti­ness to know­ing I had had an­other seizure. It had passed; both body and mind were mine to com­mand once more. But I no longer wanted them. At fif­teen years old, an age when most were com­ing into their full strength, I could no longer trust my body to per­form the simplest task. It was dam­aged, and I re­jec­ted it fiercely. I felt sav­agely vin­dict­ive to­ward the flesh and bone that en­closed me, and wished for some way to ex­press my ra­ging dis­ap­point­ment. Why couldn’t I heal? Why hadn’t I re­covered?

  ‘It’s go­ing to take time, that’s all. Wait un­til half a year has passed since the day you were dam­aged. Then as­sess your­self.’ It was Jon­qui the healer. She was sit­ting near the fire­place, but her chair was drawn back into the shad­ows. I hadn’t no­ticed her un­til she spoke. She rose slowly, as if the winter made her bones ache, and came to stand be­side my bed.

  ‘I don’t want to live like an old man.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Sooner or later, you will have to. At least, I so wish that you will sur­vive that many years. I am old, and so is my brother King Eyod. We do not find it so great a bur­den.’

  ‘I should not mind an old man’s body if the years had earned it for me. But I can’t go on like this.’

  She shook her head, puzzled. ‘Of course you can. Heal­ing is te­di­ous some­times, but to say that you can­not go on … I do not un­der­stand. It is, per­haps, a dif­fer­ence in our lan­guages?’

  I took a breath to speak, but at that mo­ment Burrich came in. ‘Awake? Feel­ing bet­ter?’

  ‘Awake. Not feel­ing bet­ter,’ I grumbled. Even to my­self, I soun­ded like a fret­ful child.

  Burrich and Jon­qui ex­changed glances over me. She came to the bed­side, pat­ted my shoulder, and then left the room si­lently. Their ob­vi­ous tol­er­ance was galling, and my im­pot­ent an­ger rose like a tide. ‘Why can’t you heal me?’ I de­man­ded of Burrich.

  He was taken aback by the ac­cus­a­tion in my ques­tion. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he began.

  ‘Why not?’ I hauled my­self up straight in the bed. ‘I’ve seen you cure all man­ner of ail­ments in beasts. Sick­ness, broken bones, worms, mange … you’re Sta­ble­mas­ter, and I’ve seen you treat them all. Why can’t you cure me?’

  ‘You’re not a dog, Fitz,’ Burrich said quietly. ‘It’s sim­pler with a beast, when it’s ser­i­ously ill. I’ve taken drastic meas­ures, some­times, telling my­self, well, if the an­imal dies, at least it’s not suf­fer­ing any more, and this may heal it. I can’t do that with you. You’re not a beast.’

  ‘That’s no an­swer! Half the time the guards come to you in­stead of the healer. You took the head of an ar­row out of Den. You laid his whole arm open to do it! When the healer said that Greydin’s foot was too in­fec­ted and she’d have to lose it, she came to you, and you saved it. And all the time the healer was say­ing the in­fec­tion would spread and she’d die and it would be your fault.’

  Burrich fol­ded his lips, quelling his tem­per. If I’d been healthy, I’d have been wary of his wrath. But his re­straint with me dur­ing my con­vales­cence had made me bold. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and con­trolled. ‘Those were risky heal­ings, yes. But the folk who wanted them done knew the risks. And,’ he said, rais­ing his voice to cover the ob­jec­tion I’d been about to voice, ‘they were simple things. I knew the cause. Take out the ar­row head and haft from his arm and clean it up. Poult­ice and draw the in­fec­tion from Greydin’s foot. But your sick­ness isn’t that simple. Neither Jon­qui nor I really know what’s wrong with you. Is it the af­ter­math of the poison Kettricken fed you when she thought you had come to kill her brother? Is this the ef­fect of the poisoned wine that Regal ar­ranged for you? Or is it from the beat­ing you took af­ter­ward? From be­ing near drowned? Or did all those things com­bine to do this to you? We don’t know, and so we don’t know how to cure you. We just don’t know.’

  His voice clenched on his last words, and I sud­denly saw how his sym­pathy for me over­lay his frus­tra­tion. He paced a few steps, then hal­ted to stare into the fire. ‘We’ve talked long about it. Jon­qui has much in her moun­tain lore that I have never heard of be­fore. And I’ve told her of cures I know. But we both agreed the best thing to do was give you time to heal. You’re in no danger of dy­ing that we can see. Pos­sibly, in time, your own body can cast out the last vestiges of the poison, or heal whatever dam­age was done in­side you.’

  ‘Or,’ I ad­ded quietly, ‘it’s pos­sible that I’ll be this way the rest of my life. That the poison or the beat­ing dam­aged some­thing per­man­ently. Damn Regal, to kick me like that when I was trussed already.’

  Burrich stood as if turned to ice. Then he sagged into the chair in the shad­ows. De­feat was in his voice. ‘Yes. That is just as pos­sible as the other. But don’t you see we have no choice? I could physick you to try to force the poison out of your body. But if it’s dam­age, not poison, all I would do was weaken you so that your body’s own heal­ing would take that much longer.’ He stared into the flames, and lif­ted a hand to touch a streak of white at his temple. I was not the only one who’d fallen to Regal’s treach­ery. Burrich him­self was but newly re­covered from a skull blow that would have killed any­one less thick-headed than he. I knew he had en­dured long days of dizzi­ness and blurred vis­ion. I did not re­call he had com­plained at all. I had the de­cency to feel a bit of shame.

  ‘So what do I do?’

  Burrich star­ted as if roused from doz­ing. ‘What we’ve been do­ing. Wait. Eat. Rest. Be easy on your­self. And see what hap­pens. Is that so ter­rible?’

  I ig­nored his ques­tion. ‘And if I don’t get bet­ter? If I just stay like this, where the tremors or fits can come over me at any time?’

  His an­swer was slow in com­ing. ‘Live with it. Many folk have to live with worse. Most of the time, you’re fine. You’re not blind. You’re not para­lyzed. You’ve your wits, still. Stop de­fin­ing your­self by what you can’t do. Why don’t you con­sider what you didn’t lose?’

  ‘What I didn’t lose? What I didn’t lose?’ My an­ger rose like a covey of birds tak­ing flight and like­wise driven by panic. ‘I’m help­less, Burrich. I can’t go back to Buck­keep like this! I’m use­less. I’m worse than use­less, I’m a wait­ing vic­tim. If I could go back and bat­ter Regal into a pulp, that might be worth it. In­stead, I will have to sit at table with Prince Regal, to be civil and de­fer­en­tial to a man who plot­ted to over­throw Ver­ity and kill me as an ad­ded spice. I can’t en­dure him see­ing me tremble with weak­ness, or sud­denly fall in a seizure. I don’t want to see him smile at what he has made me; I don’t want to watch him sa­vour his tri­umph. He will try to kill me again. We both know that. Per­haps he has learned he is no match for Ver­ity, per­haps he will re­spect his older brother’s reign and new wife. But I doubt he will ex­tend that to me. It’ll be one more way he can strike at Ver­ity. And when he comes, what shall I be do­ing? Sit­ting by the fire like a palsied old man, do­ing noth­ing. Noth­ing! All I’ve been trained for, all Hod’s weaponry in­struc­tion, all Fed­wren’s care­ful teach­ings about let­ter­ing, even all you’ve taught me about tak­ing care of beasts! All a waste! I can do none of it. I’m just a bas­tard again, Burrich. And someone once told me that a royal bas­tard is kept alive only so long as he is use­ful.’ I was prac­tic­ally shout­ing, but even in my fury and des­pair, I did not speak aloud of Chade and my train­ing as an as­sas­sin. At that, too, I was use­less now. All my stealth and sleight of hand, all the pre­cise ways to kill a man by touch, the painstak­ing mix­ing of pois­ons, all were denied me by my own rat­tling body.

  Burrich sat quietly, hear­ing me out. When my breath and my an­ger ran out and I sat gasp­ing in my bed, clasp­ing my trait­or­ously tre
m­bling hands to­gether, he spoke calmly.

  ‘So. Are you say­ing we don’t go back to Buck­keep?’

  That put me off bal­ance. ‘We?’

  ‘My life is pledged to the man who wears that ear­ring. There’s a long story be­hind that, one that per­haps I’ll tell you someday. Pa­tience had no right to give it to you. I thought it had gone with Prince Chiv­alry to his grave. She prob­ably thought it just a simple piece of jew­ellery her hus­band had worn, hers to keep or to give. In any wise, you wear it now. Where you go, I fol­low.’

  I lif­ted my hand to the bauble. It was a tiny blue stone caught up in a web of sil­ver net. I star­ted to un­fasten it.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Burrich said. The words were quiet, deeper than a dog’s growl. But his voice held both threat and com­mand. I dropped my hand away, un­able to ques­tion him on this at least. I felt strange that the man who had watched over me since I was an aban­doned child now put his fu­ture into my hands. Yet there he sat be­fore the fire and waited for my words. I stud­ied what I could see of him in the dance of the fire­light. He had once seemed a surly gi­ant to me, dark and threat­en­ing, but also a sav­age pro­tector. Now, for per­haps the first time, I stud­ied him as a man. The dark hair and eyes were pre­val­ent in those who car­ried Outis­lander blood, and in this we re­sembled each other. But his eyes were brown, not black, and the wind brought a red­ness to his cheeks above his curl­ing beard that be­spoke a fairer an­cestor some­where. When he walked, he limped, very no­tice­ably on cold days, the leg­acy of turn­ing aside a boar that had been try­ing to kill Chiv­alry. He was not as big as he had once seemed to me. If I kept on grow­ing, I would prob­ably be taller than he was be­fore an­other year was out. Nor was he massively muscled, but in­stead had a com­pact­ness to him that was a read­i­ness of both muscle and mind. It was not his size that had made him both feared and re­spec­ted at Buck­keep, but his black tem­per and his tenacity. Once, when I was very young, I had asked him if he had ever lost a fight. He had just sub­dued a wil­ful young stal­lion and was in the stall with him, calm­ing him. Burrich had grinned, teeth show­ing white as a wolf’s. The sweat had stood out in droplets on his fore­head and was run­ning down his cheeks into his dark beard. He spoke to me over the side of the stall. ‘Lost a fight?’ he’d asked, still out of breath. ‘The fight isn’t over un­til you win it, Fitz. That’s all you have to re­mem­ber. No mat­ter what the other man thinks. Or the horse.’

  I wondered if I were a fight he had to win. He’d of­ten told me that I was the last task Chiv­alry had given him. My father had ab­dic­ated the throne, shamed by my ex­ist­ence. Yet he’d given me over to this man, and told him to raise me well. Maybe Burrich thought he hadn’t fin­ished that task yet.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ I asked humbly. Neither the words nor the hu­mil­ity came eas­ily.

  ‘Heal,’ he said after a few mo­ments. ‘Take the time to heal. It can’t be forced.’ He glanced down at his own legs stretched to­ward the fire. Some­thing not a smile twis­ted his lips.

  ‘Do you think we should go back?’ I pressed.

  He leaned back into the chair. He crossed his booted feet at the ankle and stared into the fire. He took a long time an­swer­ing. But fi­nally he said, al­most re­luct­antly, ‘If we don’t, Regal will think he has won. And he will try to kill Ver­ity. Or at least do whatever he thinks he must to make a grab for his brother’s crown. I am sworn to my king, Fitz, as are you. Right now that is King Shrewd. But Ver­ity is King-in-Wait­ing. I don’t think it right that he should have waited in vain.’

  ‘He has other sol­diers more cap­able than I.’

  ‘Does that free you from your prom­ise?’

  ‘You ar­gue like a priest.’

  ‘I don’t ar­gue at all. I merely asked you a ques­tion. And one other. What do you for­sake, if you leave Buck­keep be­hind?’

  It was my turn to fall si­lent. I did think of my king, and all I had sworn to him. I thought of Prince Ver­ity and his bluff hearti­ness and open ways with me. I re­called old Chade and his slow smile when I had fi­nally mastered some ar­cane bit of lore. Lady Pa­tience and her maid Lacey, Fed­wren and Hod, even Cook and Mis­tress Hasty the seam­stress. There were not so many folk that had cared for me, but that made them more sig­ni­fic­ant, not less. I would miss all of them if I never went back to Buck­keep. But what leaped up in me like an em­ber re­kindled was my memory of Molly. And some­how, I found my­self speak­ing of her to Burrich, and him just nod­ding as I spilled out the whole story.

  When he did speak, he told me only that he had heard that the Bee­balm Chand­lery had closed when the old drunk­ard that owned it had died in debt. His daugh­ter had been forced to go to re­l­at­ives in an­other town. He did not know what town, but he was cer­tain I could find it out, if I were de­term­ined. ‘Know your heart be­fore you do, Fitz,’ he ad­ded. ‘If you’ve noth­ing to of­fer her, let her go. Are you crippled? Only if you de­cide so. But if you’re de­term­ined that you’re a cripple now, then per­haps you’ve no right to go and seek her out. I don’t think you’d want her pity. It’s a poor sub­sti­tute for love.’ And then he rose and left me to stare into the fire and think.

  Was I a cripple? Had I lost? My body jangled like badly-tuned harp strings. That was true. But my will, not Regal’s, had pre­vailed. My Prince Ver­ity was still in line for the Six Duch­ies throne, and the Moun­tain prin­cess was his wife now. Did I dread him smirk­ing over my trem­bling hands? Could I not smirk back at he who would never be king? A sav­age sat­is­fac­tion welled up in me. Burrich was right. I had not lost. But I could make sure that Regal knew I had won.

  If I had won against Regal, could I not win Molly as well? What stood between her and me? Jade? But Burrich had heard she had left Buck­keep Town, not wed. Gone pen­ni­less to live with re­l­at­ives. Shame upon him, had Jade let her do so. I would seek her out, I would find her and win her. Molly, with her hair loose and blow­ing, Molly with her bright red skirts and cloak, bold as a red-rob­ber bird, and eyes as bright. The thought of her sent a shiver down my spine. I smiled to my­self, and then felt my lips set like a ric­tus, and the shiver be­came a shud­der­ing. My body spasmed and the back of my head re­boun­ded sharply off the bed­stead. I cried out in­vol­un­tar­ily, a garg­ling word­less cry.

  In an in­stant Jon­qui was there, call­ing Burrich back, and then they were both hold­ing down my flail­ing limbs. Burrich’s body weight was flung on top of me as he strove to re­strain my thrash­ing. And then I was gone.

  I came out of black­ness into light, like sur­fa­cing from a deep dive into warm wa­ters. The down of the feather bed cradled me, the blankets were soft and warm. I felt safe. For a mo­ment, all was peace­ful. I lay qui­es­cent, al­most feel­ing good.

  ‘Fitz?’ Burrich asked, lean­ing over me.

  The world came back. I knew my­self a mangled, pi­ti­ful thing, a pup­pet with half its strings tangled or a horse with a severed ten­don. I would never be as I was be­fore; there was no place left for me in the world I had once in­hab­ited. Burrich had said, pity is a poor sub­sti­tute for love. I wanted pity from none of them.

  ‘Burrich.’

  He leaned closer over me. ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ he lied. ‘Just rest now. To­mor­row …’

  ‘To­mor­row you leave for Buck­keep,’ I told him.

  He frowned. ‘Let’s take it slowly. Give your­self a few days to re­cover, and then we’ll …’

  ‘No.’ I dragged my­self up to a sit­ting po­s­i­tion. I put every bit of strength I had into the words. ‘I’ve made a de­cision. To­mor­row you will go back to Buck­keep. There are people and an­im­als wait­ing for you there. You’re needed. It’s your home and your world. But it’s not mine. Not any more.’

  He was si­lent for a long mo­ment. ‘And what will you do?’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s no longer your con­cern. Or
any­one’s, save mine.’

  ‘The girl?’

  I shook my head again, more vi­ol­ently. ‘She’s taken care of one cripple already, and spent her youth do­ing so only to find that he left her a debtor. Shall I go back and seek her out, like this? Shall I ask her to love me, so I can be a bur­den to her like her father was? No. Alone or wed to an­other, she’s bet­ter off now as she is.’

  The si­lence stretched long between us. Jon­qui was busy in a corner of the room, con­coct­ing yet an­other herbal draught that would do noth­ing for me. Burrich stood over me, black and lower­ing as a thun­der­cloud. I knew how badly he wanted to shake me, how he longed to cuff the stub­born­ness from me. But he did not. Burrich did not hit cripples.

  ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘That leaves only your king. Or do you for­get you are sworn as a King’s Man?’

  ‘I do not for­get,’ I said quietly. ‘And did I be­lieve my­self a man still, I would go back. But I am not, Burrich. I am a li­ab­il­ity. On the game­board, I have be­come but one of those tokens that must be pro­tec­ted. A host­age for the tak­ing, power­less to de­fend my­self or any­one else. No. The last act I can make as a King’s Man is to re­move my­self, be­fore someone else does and in­jures my king in the do­ing.’

  Burrich turned aside from me. He was a sil­hou­ette in the dim room, his face un­read­able by the fire­light. ‘To­mor­row we will talk,’ he began.

  ‘Only to say farewell,’ I in­ter­rup­ted. ‘My heart is firm on this, Burrich.’ I reached up to touch the ear­ring in my ear.

  ‘If you stay, then so must I.’ There was a fierce­ness in his low voice.

  ‘That isn’t how it works,’ I told him. ‘Once, my father told you to stay be­hind, and raise a bas­tard for him. Now I tell you to leave, to go to serve a king who still needs you.’