Royal Assassin (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  I went down his stairs with the sin­cere in­ten­tion of fol­low­ing his sug­ges­tion. As it al­ways did, the stair­case sealed it­self mo­ments after I ex­ited it, by a mech­an­ism I had never been able to dis­cover. I threw three more logs on my dy­ing fire and then crossed to my bed. I sat down on it to pull my shirt off. I was ex­hausted. But not so tired that I could not catch a faint trace of Molly’s scent on my own skin as I pulled my shirt off. I sat a mo­ment longer, hold­ing my shirt in my hands. Then I put it back on and rose. I went to my door and slipped out into the hall­way.

  It was late, by any other night’s stand­ard. Yet this was the first night of Win­ter­fest. There were many be­low who would not think of their beds un­til dawn was on the ho­ri­zon. Oth­ers who would not find their own beds at all this night. I smiled sud­denly, as I real­ized I in­ten­ded to be part of the lat­ter group.

  There were oth­ers in the halls that night and on the stair­cases. Most were too in­ebri­ated, or too en­grossed in them­selves to no­tice me. As for the oth­ers, I re­solved to let Win­ter­fest be my ex­cuse for any ques­tions asked of me the next day. Still, I was dis­creet enough to be sure the cor­ridor was clear be­fore I tapped on her door. I heard no reply. But as I lif­ted my hand to tap again, the door swung si­lently open into dark­ness.

  It ter­ri­fied me. In an in­stant I was sure harm had come to her, that someone had been here and hurt her and left her there in the dark­ness. I sprang into the room, cry­ing out her name. The door swung shut be­hind me and ‘Hush!’ she com­manded.

  I turned to find her, but it took a mo­ment for my eyes to ad­just to the dark­ness. The light from the hearth fire was the only il­lu­min­a­tion in the room, and it was to my back. When my eyes did pen­et­rate the dark­ness, I felt as if I could not breathe.

  ‘Were you ex­pect­ing me?’ I asked at last.

  In a little cat voice, she replied, ‘Only for hours.’

  ‘I thought you would be at the mer­ry­mak­ing in the Great Hall.’ Slowly it dawned on me that I had not seen her there.

  ‘I knew I would not be missed there. Ex­cept by one. And I thought per­haps that one might come seek­ing me here.’

  I stood mo­tion­less and looked at her. She wore a wreath of holly upon the tumble of her hair. That was all. And she stood against the door, want­ing me to look at her. How can I ex­plain the line that had been crossed? Be­fore, we had ven­tured into this to­gether, ex­plor­ing and in­quis­it­ive. But this was dif­fer­ent. This was a wo­man’s frank in­vit­a­tion. Can there be any­thing so com­pel­ling as the know­ledge that a wo­man de­sires you? It over­whelmed me and blessed me and some­how re­deemed me from every stu­pid thing I had ever done.

  Win­ter­fest.

  The heart of night’s secret.

  Yes.

  She shook me awake be­fore dawn, and put me out of her rooms. The farewell kiss that she gave me be­fore shoo­ing me out the door was such that I stood in the hall try­ing to per­suade my­self that dawn was not all that close. After a few mo­ments, I re­called that dis­cre­tion was called for, and wiped the fool­ish smile off my face. I straightened my rumpled shirt and headed for the stairs.

  Once in­side my room, an al­most dizzy­ing wear­i­ness over­took me. How long had it been since I had had a full night’s sleep? I sat down on my bed and dragged my shirt off. I dropped it to the floor. I fell back onto the bed and closed my eyes.

  A soft tap at my door jerked me up­right. I crossed the room swiftly, smil­ing to my­self. I was still smil­ing as I swung the door wide.

  ‘Good, you’re up! And al­most dressed. I was afraid from the way you looked last night that I’d be drag­ging you out of your bed by the scruff of your neck.’

  It was Burrich, freshly washed and brushed. The lines across his fore­head were the only vis­ible signs of the last night’s rev­elry. From my years of shar­ing quar­ters with him, I knew that no mat­ter how fierce a hangover he might have, he would still rise to face his du­ties. I sighed. No good ask­ing quarter, for none would be given. In­stead I went to my clothes chest and found a clean shirt. I put it on as I fol­lowed him to Ver­ity’s tower.

  There is an odd threshold, phys­ical as well as men­tal. There have been but a few times in my life that I have been pushed over it, but each time, an ex­traordin­ary thing happened. That morn­ing was one of those times. After an hour or so had passed, I stood in Ver­ity’s tower room, shirt­less and sweat­ing. The tower win­dows were open to the winter wind, but I felt no chill. The pad­ded axe Burrich had given me was but a little lighter than the world it­self, and the weight of Ver­ity’s pres­ence in my mind felt as if it were for­cing my brain out my eyes. I could no longer keep my axe up to guard my­self. Burrich came at me again, and I made no more than a token de­fence. He bat­ted it aside with ease, then came in swiftly, one, two blows, not hard, but not softly either. ‘And you’re dead,’ he told me, and stood back. He let the head of his axe sag to the floor and stood lean­ing on it and breath­ing. I let my own axe thud head first to the floor. Use­less.

  Within my mind, Ver­ity was very still. I glanced over to where he sat star­ing out the win­dow across the sea to the ho­ri­zon. The morn­ing light was harsh on the lines in his face and the grey in his hair. His shoulders were slumped for­ward. His pos­ture mirrored what I felt. I closed my eyes a mo­ment, too weary to do any­thing any­more. And sud­denly we meshed. I saw to the ho­ri­zons of our fu­ture. We were a coun­try be­sieged by a raven­ous en­emy who came to us only to kill and maim. That was their sole goal. They had no fields to plant, no chil­dren to de­fend, no stock to tend to dis­tract them from their Raid­ing. But we strove to live our day to day lives at the same time we tried to pro­tect ourselves from their de­struc­tion. For the Red Ship Raid­ers, their rav­ages were their day to day lives. That single­ness of pur­pose was all they needed to des­troy us. We were not war­ri­ors, had not been war­ri­ors for gen­er­a­tions. We did not think like war­ri­ors. Even those of us who were sol­diers were sol­diers who had trained to fight against a ra­tional en­emy. How could we stand against an on­slaught of mad­men? What weapons did we have? I looked around. Me. My­self as Ver­ity.

  One man. One man, mak­ing him­self old as he strove to walk the line between de­fend­ing his people and be­ing swept away in the ad­dict­ive ec­stasy of the Skill. One man, try­ing to rouse us, try­ing to ig­nite us to de­fend ourselves. One man, with his eyes afar, as we squabbled and plot­ted and bickered in the rooms be­low him. It was use­less. We were doomed to fail.

  The tide of des­pair swept over me and threatened to pull me down. It swirled around me, but sud­denly, in the middle of it, I found a place to stand. A place where the very use­less­ness of it was funny. Hor­ribly funny. Four little war­ships, not quite fin­ished, with un­trained crews. Watchtowers and fire sig­nals to call the in­ept de­fend­ers forth to the slaughter. Burrich with his axe, and me stand­ing in the cold. Ver­ity star­ing out the win­dow, while be­low Regal fed his own father drugs. In the hopes of steal­ing his mind, and in­her­it­ing the whole mess, I didn’t doubt. It was all so totally use­less. And so un­think­able to give it up. A laugh welled up from in­side me, and I could not con­tain it. I stood lean­ing on my axe, and laughed as if the world were the fun­ni­est thing I’d ever seen, while Burrich and Ver­ity both stared at me. A very faint an­swer­ing smile crooked the corners of Ver­ity’s mouth; a light in his eyes shared my mad­ness.

  ‘Boy? Are you all right?’ Burrich asked me.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m ab­so­lutely fine,’ I told them both when my waves of laughter had sub­sided.

  I pulled my­self up to stand straight. I shook my head, and I swear I al­most felt my brain settle. ‘Ver­ity,’ I said, and em­braced his con­scious­ness to mine. It was easy; it had al­ways been easy, but be­fore I had be­lieved there was some­thing to lose by do­ing it. We did not meld int
o one per­son, but in­stead fit to­gether like bowls stacked in a cup­board. He rode me com­fort­ably, like a well-loaded pack. I took a breath and lif­ted my axe. ‘Again,’ I said to Burrich.

  As he came at me, I no longer al­lowed him to be Burrich. He was a man with an axe, come to kill Ver­ity, and be­fore I could stop my mo­mentum, I had laid him out on the floor. He rose, shak­ing his head, and I saw a touch of an­ger in his face. Again we came to­gether, and again I made a telling touch. ‘Third time,’ he told me, and his battle-smile lit up his weathered face. We came to­gether again with a jolt in the joy of struggle, and I over­matched him cleanly.

  Twice more we clashed be­fore Burrich sud­denly stepped back from one of my blows. He lowered his axe to the floor and stood, hunkered slightly for­ward un­til his breath came easy again. Then he straightened and looked at Ver­ity. ‘He’s got it,’ he said husk­ily. ‘He’s caught the knack of it now. Not that he’s fully honed yet. Drill will make him sharper, but you’ve made a wise choice for him. The axe is his weapon.’

  Ver­ity nod­ded slowly. ‘And he is mine.’

  SIX­TEEN

  Ver­ity’s Ships

  In the third sum­mer of the Red Ship War, the Six Duch­ies’ war­ships were blooded. Al­though they numbered only four, they rep­res­en­ted an im­port­ant change in tac­tics to de­fend­ing our realm. Our en­coun­ters that spring with the Red Ships swiftly taught us that we had for­got­ten much of be­ing war­ri­ors. The Raid­ers were right; we had be­come a race of farm­ers. But we were farm­ers who had de­term­ined to take a stand and fight. We quickly found the Raid­ers to be re­source­ful and sav­age fight­ers. This was true to the ex­tent that none of them ever sur­rendered or were taken alive. That, per­haps, should have been our first clue as to the nature of For­ging and what we ac­tu­ally battled, but at the time it was too subtle a hint, and we were too busy sur­viv­ing to won­der at it.

  The rest of that winter passed as swiftly as the first half had dragged. The sep­ar­ate parts of my lives be­came like beads and I the string that ran through them all. I be­lieve if I had ever paused to con­sider the in­tric­acy of all I did to keep those parts sep­ar­ate, I would have found it im­possible. But I was young then, much younger than I sus­pec­ted, and some­how I found the en­ergy and time to do and be it all.

  My day began be­fore dawn, with a ses­sion with Ver­ity. At least twice a week, Burrich and his axes were in­cluded. But most of­ten it was Ver­ity and I alone. He worked on my Skill sense, but not as Ga­len had. He had spe­cific tasks in mind for me, and these were what he trained me in. I learned to see through his eyes, and to give him the use of mine. I prac­tised be­ing aware of the subtle way he would steer my at­ten­tion, and in keep­ing up a con­stant men­tal com­ment­ary that kept him in­formed of all that was go­ing on around us. This in­volved me leav­ing the tower, and car­ry­ing his pres­ence about with me like a hawk on my wrist as I went about my other daily tasks. At first a few hours were as long as I could sus­tain the Skill bond, but as time went on I man­aged to share my mind with him for days at a time. The bond did weaken with the passing of time, how­ever. It was not a true Skilling from me to Ver­ity, but a touch-im­posed bond that had to be re­newed. It still gave me a sense of ac­com­plish­ment to be able to do at least this much.

  I put in a fair share of time in the Queen’s Garden, mov­ing and then shift­ing again benches and statu­ary and pots, un­til Kettricken was fi­nally sat­is­fied with the ar­range­ments there. For those hours, I al­ways made sure Ver­ity was with me. I hoped it would do him good to see his Queen as oth­ers saw her, es­pe­cially when she was caught up in the en­thu­si­asm of her snowy garden spot. Glow­ing pink-cheeked and gold-haired, wind-kissed and lively: this was how I showed her to him. He heard her speak freely of the pleas­ure she hoped this garden would bring him. Was this a be­trayal of Kettricken’s con­fid­ences to me? I pushed such un­eas­i­ness firmly away. I took him with me when I paid my du­ties to Pa­tience and Lacey.

  I also tried to carry Ver­ity out and among the folk more. Since he had be­gun his heavy Skill du­ties, he was sel­dom among the com­mon folk he had once so en­joyed. I took him to the kit­chen, and the watch-room, to the stables, and down to the tav­erns in Buck­keep Town. For his part, he steered me to the boat-sheds, where I watched the fi­nal work be­ing done on his ships. Later, I fre­quently vis­ited the dock where the ships were tied, to talk to the crews as they got to know their ves­sels. I made him aware of the grumbling of the men who thought it treas­on­ous that some Outis­lander refugees had been al­lowed to be­come crew-mem­bers of our de­fence ves­sels. It was plain to any eye that these men were ex­per­i­enced in the hand­ling of sleek raid­ing ves­sels, and were mak­ing our ships more ef­fect­ive with their ex­pert­ise. Plain, too, that many of the Six Duch­ies men re­sen­ted and dis­trus­ted the hand­ful of im­mig­rants among them. I was not sure if Ver­ity’s de­cision to use them had been wise. I said noth­ing of my own doubts, but only showed him the mut­ter­ings of other men.

  He was with me, too, the times when I called upon Shrewd. I learned to make my vis­its in late morn­ing or early af­ter­noon. Wal­lace sel­dom ad­mit­ted me eas­ily, and it al­ways seemed there were oth­ers in the room, serving-maids I did not know, a work­man os­tens­ibly re­pair­ing a door, when I went to visit. I hoped im­pa­tiently for a chance to talk with him privately about my mar­riage am­bi­tions. The Fool was there al­ways, and kept his word not to show friend­ship to me be­fore other eyes. His mock­ery was sharp and sting­ing, and even though I knew its pur­pose, he still could man­age to fluster or ir­rit­ate me. The only sat­is­fac­tion I could take was in the changes I saw in the room. Someone had tattled to Mis­tress Hasty about the state of the King’s cham­ber.

  In the midst of the Win­ter­fest activ­it­ies, such a troop of house­maids and serving-boys flocked to the room that it brought the fest­iv­it­ies to the King. Mis­tress Hasty, fists on hips, stood at the centre of the room and over­saw it all, all the while be­rat­ing Wal­lace for ever let­ting things reach such a state. Evid­ently he had been as­sur­ing her that he had been per­son­ally see­ing to the tidy­ing and laun­der­ing in an ef­fort to keep the King from be­ing dis­turbed. I spent one very merry af­ter­noon there, for the activ­ity awoke Shrewd, and soon he seemed al­most his old self. He hushed Mis­tress Hasty when she be­rated her own folk for lax­ness, and in­stead ex­changed banter with them as floors were scrubbed, fresh reeds strewn, and the fur­niture rubbed well with fra­grant cleans­ing oil. Mis­tress Hasty bundled a ver­it­able moun­tain of quilts upon the King while she ordered the win­dows opened and the room aired. She, too, sniffed at all the ashes and burn pots. I quietly sug­ges­ted that Wal­lace might best see to their cleans­ing, as he was most fa­mil­iar with the qual­it­ies of the herbs that had burned there. He was a much more do­cile and tract­able man when he re­turned with the pots. I wondered if he him­self knew just what ef­fect his smokes had upon Shrewd. But if these smokes were not his do­ing, then whose? The Fool and I ex­changed more than one secret sig­ni­fic­ant glance.

  Not only was the cham­ber scrubbed out, but made bright as well, with fest­ive candles and wreaths, ever­greens and bare branches of trees gil­ded and hung with painted nuts. It brought the col­our back into the King’s cheeks. I sensed Ver­ity’s quiet ap­proval. When that night the King des­cen­ded from his cham­bers to join us in the Great Hall, and ac­tu­ally called out for his fa­vour­ite mu­si­cians and songs, I took it as a per­sonal vic­tory.

  Some mo­ments were solely mine, of course, and not just my nights with Molly. As of­ten as I could man­age, I would creep off from the keep, to run and hunt with my wolf. Bon­ded as our minds were, I was never com­pletely isol­ated from him, but a simple mind link did not have the deep sat­is­fac­tion of shar­ing a hunt. It is hard to ex­press the com­plete­ness of two be­ings mov
­ing as one, for a single pur­pose. Those times were really the ful­filling of our bond. But even when I went days without phys­ic­ally see­ing him, he was with me. His pres­ence was like a per­fume, which one is aware of greatly when one first en­coun­ters it, but then be­comes simply a part of the air one breathes. I knew he was there in small ways. My sense of smell seemed more acute, and I at­trib­uted this to his ex­pert­ise in read­ing what the air brought me. I be­came more aware of oth­ers around me, as if his con­scious­ness were guard­ing my back, and alert­ing me to small sens­ory clues I might oth­er­wise have ig­nored. Food was more sa­voury, per­fumes more tan­gible. I tried not to ex­tend this lo­gic to my ap­pet­ite for Molly’s com­pany. I knew he was there, but as he had prom­ised, he did noth­ing overt to make me aware of him at such times.

  A month after Win­ter­fest, I found my­self thrown into a new la­bour. Ver­ity had told me he wished me aboard a ship. I found my­self summoned one day to the deck of the Rurisk, and as­signed a spot at an oar. The mas­ter of the ves­sel openly wondered why he had been sent a twig when he asked for a log. I could not dis­pute the ques­tion. Most of the men around me were brawny fel­lows and seasoned ship-hands. My only pos­sible chance to prove my­self was to throw my­self into my tasks with every bit of en­ergy I could muster. At least I had the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing I was not alone in my in­ex­per­i­ence. While the other men aboard had all served in some fash­ion on other ves­sels, all save the Outis­landers among the crew were new to this style of ship.

  Ver­ity had had to seek out our old­est ship­wrights to come up with men who knew how to build a fight­ing ship. The Rurisk was the largest of the four ves­sels launched at Win­ter­fest. The lines of the boat were sleek and sinu­ous, and her shal­low draught meant that she could skim across a calm sea like an in­sect on a pond, or ride out rough swell as hand­ily as any gull. In two of the other boats, the plank­ing was pegged edge to edge into the ribs, but the Rurisk and her smal­ler sis­ter ship Con­stance were clinker-built, with the plank­ing over­lapped. The Rurisk had been built by Mast­fish, and the plank­ing was well fit­ted, but still had the give to with­stand any bat­ter­ing the seas might of­fer. Only a min­imum of caulking with tarred rope had been needed, so lov­ingly had this ship been craf­ted. Her mast of pine sup­por­ted a sail of spun flax re­in­forced with rope. Ver­ity’s buck graced the sail of the Rurisk.