Royal Assassin (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  ‘Prince Regal said spe­cific­ally that you were not to be ad­mit­ted.’

  ‘But that was be­fore …’ And I let my voice drop lower as I muttered a few mean­ing­less syl­lables.

  ‘What did you say?’

  I muttered again.

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘This is not for all the keep to hear!’ I re­tor­ted in­dig­nantly. ‘This is not time to spread a panic.’

  That did it. The door opened a tiny crack. ‘What is it?’ the man hissed.

  I leaned in close to the door, looked up and down the cor­ridor. I peered past him through the crack. ‘Are you alone?’ I asked sus­pi­ciously.

  ‘Yes!’ Im­pa­tiently. ‘Now what is it? It had bet­ter be good!’

  I lif­ted my hands to my mouth as I leaned to­ward the door, un­will­ing to let the slight­est breath of my secret es­cape. The guard leaned closer to the crack. I gave a quick puff of my lips and a white powder mis­ted his face. He staggered back, claw­ing at his eyes and strangling. In an in­stant he was down. Night­m­ist: it was quick, it was ef­fect­ive. It was also of­ten deadly. I could not find it in my­self to care. It was not so much that this was my shoulder-wrench­ing friend. This guard could not have stood in the ante­cham­ber of Shrewd’s room and been totally un­aware of what went on within.

  I had reached in through the crack and was strug­gling to undo the chains that se­cured the door when I heard a fa­mil­iar hiss. ‘Get out of here. Leave the door alone, just go away. Don’t un­latch it, you fool!’ I had a brief glimpse of a pocked vis­age and then the door was shut firmly in my face. Chade was right. It would be best for Regal to en­counter a fully-latched door, and to spend his time hav­ing his men chop through it. Every mo­ment Regal was shut out was an­other mo­ment that Chade had with the King.

  What fol­lowed was harder to do than what I had already done. I went down the stairs to the kit­chen, made friendly with the Cook, and then asked her what the com­mo­tion up­stairs had been. Had the Queen lost her baby? She ban­ished me quickly to find folk to talk to who would know more. I made my way into the watch-room off the kit­chen, to con­sume a small beer and force my­self to eat as if I wanted to. The food lay in my stom­ach like so much gravel. No one spoke to me much, but I was a pres­ence. The gos­sip about the Queen’s fall ebbed and flowed around me. There were Tilth and Far­row guards here now, big, slow-mov­ing men, part of their dukes’ ret­in­ues, hob­nob­bing with the Buck­keep coun­ter­parts. It was more bit­ter than bile to hear them speak avidly of what the loss of the child would mean to Regal’s chances for the throne. It was as if they bet on a horse race.

  The only other gos­sip that could com­pete with it was a ru­mour that a boy had seen the Pocked Man by the castle well in the court­yard. It was sup­posed to have been nearly mid­night when the lad saw him. Not one had the sense to won­der what the boy was do­ing out there, or what light his eyes had used to see his vis­ion of ill omen. In­stead they were vow­ing to stay well away from wa­ter, for surely this omen meant the well had gone bad. At the rate at which they were drink­ing beer, I de­cided they had little to worry about. I stayed un­til word was sent down that Regal wanted three strong men with axes sent im­me­di­ately to the King’s cham­bers. That ex­cited a fresh round of talk, and dur­ing it I quietly left the room and went to the stables.

  I had in­ten­ded to seek out Burrich and see if the Fool had found him yet. In­stead I en­countered Molly com­ing down his steep stairs just as I had be­gun to climb them. She looked down at the astoun­ded look on my face and laughed. But it was a short laugh, and it never reached her eyes.

  ‘Why did you go to see Burrich?’ I de­man­ded, and in­stantly real­ized how rude my ques­tion was. I had feared she had gone seek­ing help.

  ‘He is my friend,’ she said suc­cinctly. She star­ted to push past me. Without think­ing, I stood firm. ‘Let me past!’ she hissed sav­agely.

  In­stead I put my arms around her. ‘Molly, Molly, please,’ I said hoarsely, as she pushed at me without heart. ‘Let us find a place to talk, if only for a mo­ment. I can­not bear to have you look at me that way, when I swear I have done you no wrong. You act as if I have cast you off, but you are in my heart al­ways. If I can­not be with you, it is not be­cause I do not wish to.’

  She stopped strug­gling sud­denly.

  ‘Please?’ I begged her.

  She glanced about the dim barn. ‘We will stand and we will talk. Briefly. Right here.’

  ‘Why are you so angry with me?’

  She nearly answered me. I saw her bite back words, then turn sud­denly cold. ‘Why do you think that what I feel about you is the centre­most pil­lar of my life?’ she re­tor­ted. ‘Why do you think I have no other con­cerns but you?’

  I gaped at her. ‘Per­haps be­cause it is how I feel about you,’ I said gravely.

  ‘It is not.’ She was ex­as­per­ated, cor­rect­ing me the way she would cor­rect a child who in­sisted the sky was green.

  ‘It is,’ I in­sisted. I tried to gather her to me, but she was wooden in my arms.

  ‘Your King-in-Wait­ing Ver­ity was more im­port­ant. King Shrewd is more im­port­ant. Queen Kettricken and her un­born child are more im­port­ant.’ She ticked them off on her fin­gers as if she were num­ber­ing my faults.

  ‘I know my duty,’ I said quietly.

  ‘I know where your heart is,’ she said flatly. ‘And it is not first with me.’

  ‘Ver­ity is … is no longer here to pro­tect his queen, his child, or his father,’ I said reas­on­ably. ‘So, for this time, I must put them ahead of my own life. Ahead of everything I hold dear. Not be­cause I love them more but …’ I floundered use­lessly after words. ‘I am a King’s Man,’ I said help­lessly.

  ‘I am my own wo­man.’ Molly made it the lone­li­est state­ment in the world. ‘I will take care of my­self.’

  ‘Not forever,’ I pro­tested. ‘Someday, we will be free. Free to wed, to do …’

  ‘Whatever your king asks you to do,’ she fin­ished for me. ‘No, Fitz.’ There was fi­nal­ity in her voice. Pain. She pushed away from me, stepped past me on the stair­case. When she was two steps away and all of winter seemed to be blow­ing between us, she spoke.

  ‘I have to tell you some­thing,’ she said, al­most gently. ‘There is an­other in my life now. One who is for me what your king is for you. One who comes be­fore my own life, who comes ahead of all else I hold dear. By your own words, you can­not fault me.’ She looked back up at me.

  I do not know what I looked like, only that she looked aside as if she could not bear it.

  ‘For the sake of that one, I am go­ing away,’ she told me. ‘To a safer place than this.’

  ‘Molly, please, he can­not love you as I do,’ I begged.

  She did not look at me. ‘Nor can your king love you as I … used to. But. It is not a mat­ter of what he feels for me,’ she said slowly. ‘It is what I feel for him. He must be first in my life. He needs that from me. Un­der­stand this. It is not that I no longer care for you. It is that I can­not put that feel­ing ahead of what is best for him.’ She went down two more steps. ‘Good­bye, New­boy.’ She no more than breathed those fi­nal words, but they sank into my heart as if branded there.

  I stood on the steps, watch­ing her go. And sud­denly that feel­ing was too fa­mil­iar, the pain too well known. I flung my­self down the steps after her, I seized her arm, I pulled her un­der the loft stairs into the dark­ness there. ‘Molly,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  She said noth­ing. She did not even res­ist my grip on her arm.

  ‘What can I give you, what can I tell you to make you un­der­stand what you are to me? I can’t just let you go!’

  ‘No more can you make me stay,’ she poin­ted out in a low voice. I felt some­thing go out of her. Some an­ger, some spirit, some will. I have no word for it. ‘Please,’ she said, and the word hurt me, be­cause she be
gged. ‘Just let me go. Don’t make it hard. Don’t make me cry.’

  I let go of her arm, but she did not leave.

  ‘A long time ago,’ she said care­fully. ‘I told you that you were like Burrich.’

  I nod­ded in the dark­ness, not caring she could not see me.

  ‘In some ways you are. In oth­ers, you are not. I de­cide for us, now, as he once de­cided for Pa­tience and him­self. There is no fu­ture for us. Someone already fills your heart. And the gap between our sta­tions is too great for any love to bridge. I know that you love me. But your love is … dif­fer­ent from mine. I wanted us to share all our lives. You wish to keep me in a box, sep­ar­ate from your life. I can­not be someone you come to when you have noth­ing more im­port­ant to do. I don’t even know what it is that you do, when you are not with me. You have never even shared that much with me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it,’ I told her. ‘You don’t really want to know.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that,’ she whispered an­grily. ‘Don’t you see that that is what I can­not live with, that you do not let me even de­cide that for my­self? You can­not make that de­cision for me. You have no right! If you can­not even tell me that, how can I be­lieve you love me?’

  ‘I kill people,’ I heard my­self say. ‘For my king. I’m an as­sas­sin, Molly.’

  ‘I don’t be­lieve you!’ she hissed. She spoke too quickly. The hor­ror in her voice was as great as the con­tempt. A part of her knew I had spoken the truth to her. Fi­nally. A ter­rible si­lence, brief but so cold, grew between us as she waited for me to ad­mit a lie. A lie she knew was truth. At last she denied it for me. ‘You, a killer? You couldn’t even run past the guard that day, to see why I was cry­ing! You didn’t have the cour­age to defy them for me! But you want me to be­lieve you kill people for the King.’ She made a chok­ing sound, of an­ger and des­pair. ‘Why do you say such things now? Why now, of all times? To im­press me?’

  ‘If I had thought it would im­press you, I prob­ably would have told you a long time ago,’ I con­fessed. And it was true. My abil­ity to keep my secrets had been soundly based on my fear that telling Molly would mean los­ing her. I was right.

  ‘Lies,’ she said, more to her­self than me. ‘Lies, all lies. From the be­gin­ning. I was so stu­pid. If a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again, they say. And the same is true for ly­ing. But I stayed, and I listened and I be­lieved. What a fool I’ve been!’ This last, so sav­agely that I re­coiled from it as from a blow. She stood clear of me. ‘Thank you, FitzChiv­alry,’ she said coldly, form­ally. ‘You’ve made this so much easier for me.’ She turned away from me.

  ‘Molly,’ I begged. I reached to take her arm, but she spun about, her hand raised to slap me.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed in a low voice. ‘Don’t you ever dare to touch me again!’

  She left.

  After a time, I re­membered I was stand­ing un­der Burrich’s stairs in the dark. I shivered with cold and some­thing more. No. Some­thing less. My lips drew back from my teeth in some­thing neither a smile nor a snarl. I had al­ways feared that my lies would make me lose Molly. But the truth had severed in an in­stant what my lies had held to­gether for a year. What must I learn from that, I wondered? Very slowly I climbed up the steps. I knocked on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Burrich’s voice.

  ‘Me.’ He un­latched the door and I came into the room. ‘What was Molly do­ing here?’ I asked him, not caring how it might sound, not caring that the band­aged Fool sat still at Burrich’s table. ‘Did she need help?’

  Burrich cleared his throat. ‘She came for herbs,’ he said un­eas­ily, ‘I could not help her, I did not have what she wanted. Then the Fool came, and she stayed to help me with him.’

  ‘Pa­tience and Lacey have herbs. Lots of them,’ I poin­ted out.

  ‘That is what I told her.’ He turned away from me, and began clear­ing away the things he had used to work on the Fool. ‘She did not wish to go to them.’ There was some­thing in his voice, al­most prod­ding, push­ing me to the next ques­tion.

  ‘She’s go­ing away,’ I said in a small voice. ‘She’s go­ing away.’ I sat down on a chair be­fore Burrich’s fire and clenched my hands between my knees. I be­came aware I was rock­ing back and forth, tried to stop.

  ‘Did you suc­ceed?’ The Fool asked quietly.

  I stopped rock­ing. I swear that for an in­stant I had no idea what he was talk­ing about. ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘Yes, I think I did.’ I had suc­ceeded at los­ing Molly, too. Suc­ceeded at wear­ing away her loy­alty and her love, tak­ing her for gran­ted, suc­ceeded at be­ing so lo­gical and prac­tical and loyal to my king that I had just lost any chance of ever hav­ing a life of my own. I looked at Burrich. ‘Did you love Pa­tience?’ I asked sud­denly. ‘When you de­cided to leave?’

  The Fool star­ted, then vis­ibly goggled. So there were some secrets even he did not know. Burrich’s face went as dark as I had ever seen it. He crossed his arms on his chest, as if to re­strain him­self. He might kill me, I thought. Or maybe he sought only to hold some pain in­side him­self. ‘Please,’ I ad­ded, ‘I have to know.’

  He glared at me, then spoke care­fully. ‘I am not a change­able man,’ he told me. ‘If I had loved her, I would love her still.’

  So. It would never go away. ‘But, still, you de­cided …’

  ‘Someone had to de­cide. Pa­tience would not see it could not be. Someone had to end the tor­ment for us both.’

  As Molly had de­cided for us. I tried to think just what I should do next. Noth­ing came to me. I looked at the Fool. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m bet­ter off than you are,’ he replied, sin­cerely.

  ‘I meant, your shoulder. I had thought …’

  ‘Wrenched, but not broken. Much bet­ter than your heart.’

  A quick ban­ter­ing of witty words. I had not known he could weight a jest with so much sym­pathy. The kind­ness pushed me to the edge of break­ing. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said brokenly. ‘How can I live with this?’

  The brandy bottle made a very small thud as Burrich set it in the centre of the table. He put out three cups around it. ‘We will have a drink,’ he said. ‘To Molly find­ing hap­pi­ness some­where. We will wish it for her with all our hearts.’

  We drank a round and Burrich re­filled the cups.

  The Fool swirled the brandy in his cup. ‘Is this wise, just now?’ he asked.

  ‘Just now, I have fin­ished with be­ing wise,’ I told him. ‘I would rather be a fool.’

  ‘You do not know of what you speak,’ he told me. All the same, he raised his glass along­side mine. And a third time, to our king.

  We made a sin­cere ef­fort, but fate did not al­low us suf­fi­cient time. A de­term­ined rap­ping at Burrich’s door proved to be Lacey with a bas­ket on her arm. She came in quickly, shut­ting the door fast be­hind her. ‘Get rid of this for me, will you?’ she asked, and tumbled the slain chicken out on the table be­fore us.

  ‘Din­ner!’ an­nounced the Fool en­thu­si­ast­ic­ally.

  It took Lacey a mo­ment to real­ize the state we were in. It took her less than that to be furi­ous. ‘While we gamble our lives and repu­ta­tions, you get drunk!’ She roun­ded on Burrich. ‘In twenty years, you have not learned that it solves noth­ing!’

  Burrich flinched not at all. ‘Some things can­not be solved,’ he poin­ted out philo­soph­ic­ally. ‘Drink makes those things much more tol­er­able.’ He came to his feet eas­ily, stood rock­steady be­fore her. Years of drink­ing seemed to have taught him the knack of hand­ling it well. ‘What did you need?’

  Lacey bit her lip a mo­ment. She de­cided to fol­low where he had poin­ted the con­ver­sa­tion, ‘I need that dis­posed of. And I need an oint­ment for bruises.’

  ‘Does no one around here ever use the healer?’ the Fool asked of no one in par­tic�
�u­lar. Lacey ig­nored him.

  ‘That is what I sup­posedly came here for, so I had best re­turn with it, in case someone asks to see it. My real mis­sion is to find the Fitz, and ask him if he knows there are guards chop­ping down King Shrewd’s door with axes.’

  I nod­ded gravely. I wasn’t go­ing to at­tempt Burrich’s grace­ful stance. The Fool leapt to his feet in­stead, cry­ing, ‘What?’ He roun­ded on me. ‘I thought you said you had suc­ceeded! What suc­cess is this?’

  ‘The best I could man­age on very short no­tice,’ I re­tor­ted. ‘It will either be all right, or it won’t. We’ve done all we can just now. Be­sides, think on it. That’s a good, stout, oaken door. It will take them a while to get through it. And when they do, I fancy they will find the in­ner door to the King’s bed­cham­ber is like­wise bolted and barred.’

  ‘How did you man­age that?’ Burrich asked quietly.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said brusquely. I looked at the Fool. ‘I have said enough, for now. It is time to have a bit of trust.’ I turned to Lacey. ‘How are the Queen and Pa­tience? How went our mas­quer­ade?’

  ‘Well enough. The Queen is sore bruised from her fall, and for my­self, I am not all that sure that the babe is out of danger of be­ing lost. A mis­car­riage from a fall does not al­ways hap­pen im­me­di­ately. But let us not bor­row trouble. Wal­lace was con­cerned but in­ef­fec­tual. For a man who claims to be a healer, he knows re­mark­ably little of the true lore of herbs. As for the Prince …’ Lacey snorted, but said no more.

  ‘Does no one be­side my­self think there is a danger to let­ting a ru­mour of mis­car­riage cir­cu­late?’ the Fool asked air­ily.

  ‘I had no time to de­vise any­thing else,’ I re­tor­ted.

  ‘In a day or so, the Queen will deny the ru­mour, say­ing that all seems to be well with the child.’

  ‘So. For the mo­ment, we are as se­cured as we may be,’ Burrich ob­served. ‘But what comes next? Are we to see the King and Queen Kettricken car­ried off to Trade­ford?’

  ‘Trust. I ask for one day of trust,’ I said care­fully. I hoped it would be enough. ‘And now we must dis­perse and go about our lives as nor­mally as we can.’