Royal Assassin (UK)

by Robin Hobb

  The door was flung open. A guard thrust a torch into my cell, then cau­tiously fol­lowed it. Two other guards fol­lowed. ‘You. On your feet!’ barked the one with the torch. Far­row was in his ac­cent.

  I saw no point in re­fus­ing to obey. I stood up, let­ting Brawndy’s cloak fall back on the bench. Their leader made a curt ges­ture, and I fell in between the two guards. There were four oth­ers out­side my cell, wait­ing. Regal was tak­ing no chances. None of them was any­one I knew. They all wore the col­ours of Regal’s guard. I could tell their or­ders by the looks on their faces. I gave them no ex­cuses. They took me down the hall a short way, past the deser­ted guard-post, to the lar­ger cham­ber that served once as a guard-room. It had been cleared of fur­niture, save for a com­fort­able chair. Every sconce boas­ted a torch, mak­ing the room pain­fully bright to my light-de­prived eyes. The guards left me stand­ing in the middle of the room, and joined oth­ers lin­ing the walls. Habit more than hope made me as­sess my situ­ation. I coun­ted four­teen guards. Surely that was an ex­cess, even for me. Both doors to the cham­ber were closed. We waited.

  Wait­ing, stand­ing, in a brightly-lit room sur­roun­ded by hos­tile men can be un­der­es­tim­ated as a form of tor­ture. I tried to stand quietly, to shift my weight un­ob­trus­ively. I rap­idly grew tired. It was fright­en­ing to dis­cover how quickly star­va­tion and in­activ­ity had weakened me. I felt al­most a sense of re­lief when the door fi­nally opened. Regal entered, fol­lowed by Will. Will was re­mon­strat­ing quietly with him.

  ‘… un­ne­ces­sary. An­other night or so would be all I re­quired.’

  ‘I prefer this,’ Regal said acidly.

  Will bowed his head in si­lent as­sent. Regal was seated, and Will took a po­s­i­tion be­hind his left shoulder. Regal con­sidered me for a mo­ment, then leaned back neg­li­gently in his chair. He cocked his head to one side and breathed out through his nose. He lif­ted a fin­ger, in­dic­ated a man. ‘Bolt. You. I want noth­ing broken. When we have what we want, I’ll want to make him present­able once more. You un­der­stand.’

  Bolt nod­ded briefly. He stripped off his winter cloak and let it fall, pulled off his shirt as well. The other men watched stony-eyed. From some long-ago dis­cus­sion with Chade, a small bit of ad­vice came to mind. ‘You can hold out longer un­der tor­ture if you fo­cus on what you will say rather than what you won’t. I’ve heard of men re­peat­ing the same phrase, over and over, long past the point where they could hear the ques­tions any more. By fo­cus­ing on what you will say, you make it less likely you’ll say that which you don’t wish to.’

  But this the­or­et­ical ad­vice might not do much for me. Regal did not seem to have any ques­tions to ask.

  Bolt was taller than I was, heav­ier than I was. He looked as if his diet in­cluded a lot more than bread and wa­ter. He limbered and stretched as if we were go­ing to wrestle for a Win­ter­fest purse. I stood watch­ing him. He met my look and smiled at me lip­lessly. I watched him pull on a pair of fin­ger­less leather gloves. He’d come pre­pared for this. Then he bowed to Regal, and Regal nod­ded.

  What’s this?

  Be si­lent! I ordered Nighteyes. But as Bold stepped pur­pose­fully to­ward me, I felt a snarl twitch at my up­per lip. I dodged his first punch, stepped in to land one of my own, and then moved back as he swung again. Des­per­a­tion lent me agil­ity. I had not ex­pec­ted a chance to de­fend my­self, I had ex­pec­ted to be bound and tor­men­ted. Of course, there was plenty of time for that. Regal had all the time he needed. Don’t think of that. I had never been good at this kind of fight. Don’t think of that either. Bolt’s fist grazed my cheek sting­ingly. Be wary. I was lur­ing him to open up, tak­ing his meas­ure, when the Skill wrapped me. I reeled in Will’s on­slaught, and Bolt landed his next three blows ef­fort­lessly. Jaw, chest and high on my cheek. All quick and solid. The style of a man who did this a lot. The smile of a man who en­joyed it.

  There fol­lowed a time­less period for me. I could not both shield my­self from Will and de­fend my­self from Bolt bat­ter­ing me. I reasoned, if the think­ing one does in such a state can be called reas­on­ing, that my body had its own de­fences against phys­ical pain. I’d pass out, or die. Dy­ing might be the only vic­tory I could hope for here. So I chose to de­fend my mind rather than body. I veer away from re­call­ing that beat­ing. My token de­fence was to move away from his blows and force him to pur­sue me, to keep my eyes on him, to block where I could as long as it did not dis­tract me from my vi­gil against Will’s Skill pres­sure. I heard the guards jeer at my sup­posed lack of spirit as I scarcely fought back. When one of his blows sent me stag­ger­ing back against the sol­diers who ringed us, their shoves and kicks drove me back to­ward Bolt again.

  I could not de­vote my thoughts to strategy. When I swung, I swung wildly, and the few times my fists landed, it was with small im­pact. I longed to re­lease my­self, to tap my fury and just fling my­self at Bolt and ham­mer at him any way I could. But that would have left me open to Will’s in­ten­tions. No, I had to re­main cool and en­dure. As Will in­creased his pres­sure on me, Bolt had a leis­urely time of it. Even­tu­ally, I was re­duced to two choices. I could use my arms to shel­ter either my head or my body. He merely shif­ted tar­gets. The hor­ror was that I knew the man was hold­ing back, strik­ing only to in­flict pain and minor dam­age. I dropped my hands once and met Will’s gaze face-on. I had the very brief sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing the sweat that streamed down his face. At that mo­ment, Bolt’s fist con­nec­ted solidly with my nose.

  Blade had once de­scribed to me the sound that he heard as his nose broke in a brawl. Words did not do it justice. A sick­en­ing sound com­bined with in­cred­ible pain. Pain so in­tense it was sud­denly the only pain I was aware of. I blacked out.

  I don’t know how long I was out. I fluttered to the edge of con­scious­ness, hovered there. Someone had flipped me over onto my back. Who­ever it was straightened from in­spect­ing me. ‘Nose is broke,’ he an­nounced.

  ‘Bolt, I said noth­ing broken!’ Regal re­mon­strated with him an­grily. ‘I have to be able to show him in­tact. Bring me some wine,’ he ad­ded ir­rit­ably in an aside to someone else.

  ‘Not a prob­lem, King Regal,’ someone as­sured him. That per­son bent over me, took a firm grip on the bridge of my nose, and dragged it straight again. That crude set­ting of it hurt worse than the break­ing, and once more I dipped down into un­con­scious­ness. I lingered there, hear­ing the voices dis­cuss me for some time be­fore they re­solved into words and the words into sense.

  Regal’s voice. ‘So what is he sup­posed to be able to do? Why hasn’t he done it yet?’

  ‘I know only what Se­rene and Justin told me, your majesty.’ Will’s voice was tired. ‘They claimed he was weary from Skilling, and Justin was able to force his way into him. Then the Bas­tard … fought back in some way. Justin said he be­lieved him­self at­tacked by a great wolf. Se­rene said she ac­tu­ally saw the marks of claws on Justin, but that they faded shortly af­ter­wards.’

  I heard the creak of wood as Regal flung him­self back in his chair. ‘Well, make him do it. I wish to see this Wit for my­self.’ A pause. ‘Or are you not strong enough? Per­haps Justin was the one I should have held in re­serve.’

  ‘I am stronger than Justin was, your majesty,’ Will as­ser­ted calmly. ‘But Fitz is aware of my in­tent. He was not ex­pect­ing Justin’s at­tack.’ More quietly he ad­ded, ‘He is stronger far than I was led to be­lieve.’

  ‘Just do it!’ Regal com­manded in dis­gust.

  So Regal wanted to see the Wit? I drew a breath, gathered what little strength was in­side me. I tried to fo­cus my an­ger at Regal, to re­pel at him hard enough to drive him through the wall. But I could not. I was too riddled with pain to con­cen­trate. My own walls de­feated me. All Regal did was start, and then look at me more closely.

/>   ‘He’s awake,’ he ob­served. Again his fin­ger lif­ted lazily. ‘Verde. You may have him. But have a care to his nose. Leave his face alone. The rest of him is eas­ily covered.’

  Verde de­voted some little time in haul­ing me to my feet so he could knock me down again. I wear­ied of that re­pe­ti­tion long be­fore he did. The floor did as much dam­age as his fists. I could not seem to keep my feet un­der me, nor lift my arms to shield my­self. I re­treated in­side my­self, smal­ler and smal­ler, hud­dling there un­til sheer phys­ical pain would force me to alert­ness and make me struggle again, usu­ally just be­fore I passed out once more. I be­came aware of an­other thing. Regal’s en­joy­ment. He did not want to bind me and cause me pain. He wanted to watch me struggle, to see me at­tempt to fight back and fail. He watched his guard, too, not­ing, no doubt, which ones turned their eyes away from this sport. He used me to take their meas­ure. I forced my­self not to care that he took pleas­ure from my pain. All that truly mattered was keep­ing my walls up and keep­ing Will out of my head. That was the battle I had to win.

  The fourth time I awoke, I was on the floor of my cell. A ter­rible snuff­ling, wheez­ing sound was what had wakened me. It was the sound of my breath­ing. I re­mained where they had dumped me. After a time, I lif­ted a hand and pawed Brawndy’s cloak down from the bench. It fell par­tially on top of me. I lay a time longer. Regal’s guards had listened to him. Noth­ing was broken. Everything hurt, but no bones were broken. All they had given me was pain. Noth­ing I could die from.

  I crawled over to my wa­ter. I will not enu­mer­ate the pains it cost for me to lift it and drink. My ini­tial at­tempts to de­fend my­self had left my hands swollen and sore. I tried vainly to keep the edge of the pot from bump­ing against my mouth. Fi­nally, I man­aged to drink. The wa­ter strengthened me, to make me all the more aware of every­where I hurt. My half loaf of bread was there as well. I stuck the end of it in what was left of my wa­ter, and then sucked the soaked bread from the loaf as it softened. It tasted like blood. Bolt’s ini­tial bat­ter­ing of my head had loosened teeth and cut my mouth. I was aware of my nose as an im­mense area of throb­bing pain. I could not bring my­self to touch it with my fin­gers. There was no pleas­ure in eat­ing, only a par­tial re­lief from the hun­ger that clawed at me along­side my pain.

  After a time, I sat up. I dragged the cloak around me and con­sidered what I knew. Regal would bat­ter at me phys­ic­ally un­til I either mani­fes­ted the Wit in an at­tack his guards could wit­ness, or un­til I dropped my walls enough that Will could get in my mind and in­spire me to con­fess. I wondered which way he would rather win. I did not doubt he would win. My sole way out of this cell was by dy­ing. Op­tions. To try to make them beat me to death be­fore I either used the Wit or dropped my Skill bar­rier to Will. Or, to take the poison I had made for Wal­lace. I would die from it. That was def­in­ite. In my weakened state, it would prob­ably be faster than I had planned it for him. Still pain­ful, though. Wretchedly pain­ful.

  One kind of pain seemed as good as an­other. La­bor­i­ously I fol­ded back my blood­ied right cuff. The hid­den pocket was se­cured by a thread that should have come loose at a slight tug. But blood had mat­ted it closed. I picked at it care­fully. Mustn’t spill it. I’d need to wait un­til they gave me more wa­ter to get it down, oth­er­wise I’d just gag and retch on the bit­ter powder. I was still work­ing at it when I heard voices down the hall­way.

  It did not seem fair they would come back at me so soon. I listened. It wasn’t Regal. But any­one com­ing down here meant some­thing to do with me. A deep voice, rum­bling along in a ram­bling way. The guards reply­ing briefly, in hos­tile tones. An­other voice, in­ter­ced­ing, reas­on­ing. The rum­bling again, get­ting louder, and the bel­li­ger­ence plain. Sud­denly a shout.

  ‘You’re go­ing to die, Fitz! Hung over wa­ter, and your body burned!’

  Burrich’s voice. A strange mix of an­ger and threat and pain.

  ‘Get him out of here.’ One of the guards, speak­ing loud and plain now. She was ob­vi­ously an In­lander.

  ‘I will, I will.’ I knew that voice. Blade. ‘He’s just had a bit too much to drink, that’s all. It’s al­ways been a prob­lem with him. And he had the boy as his ap­pren­tice down there in the stables for years. Every­one’s say­ing he should have known about it, did know about it and didn’t do any­thing, maybe.’

  ‘Yessss.’ Burrich drew out the angry af­firm­a­tion. ‘And I’m out of a job now, Bas­tard! No more buck’s crest for me! Well, by El’s ass, it hardly mat­ters. Horses are gone. Best damned horses I ever trained, gone in­land now, given over to fools! Dogs are gone, hawks are gone! All that’re left are the scrubs and a couple mules. Don’t have one horse I’d ad­mit to own­ing!’ His voice was grow­ing closer. There was mad­ness in it.

  I scrabbled up the door, clung to the bars to see. I couldn’t see the guard-post, but their shad­ows were on the wall. Burrich’s shadow was at­tempt­ing to come down the hall while the guards and Blade tried to drag him back.

  ‘Wait. Now, just wait a minute,’ Burrich re­mon­strated drunk­enly. ‘Wait. Look. I only want to talk to him. That’s all.’ The cluster of people surged down the hall, hal­ted again. The guards were between Burrich and my door. Blade was cling­ing to Burrich’s arm. He still showed the marks from the brawl, and one of his arms was in a sling. He could do little to stop Burrich.

  ‘Just get mine in be­fore Regal gets his. That’s all. That’s all.’ Burrich’s voice was deep and slurry with drink. ‘Come on. Just for a minute. What’s it go­ing to mat­ter any­way? He’s good as dead.’ An­other pause. ‘Look. I’ll make it worth your while. Look here.’

  The guards were ex­chan­ging glances.

  ‘Uh, Blade, you got any coin left?’ Burrich was dig­ging through his pouch, then snorted with dis­gust and upen­ded it over his hand. Coins fell in a shower, spill­ing past his fin­gers. ‘Here, here.’ There was the chink and rattle of coins dropped and rolling on the stone floor of the pas­sage­way and he flung his arms wide in a ges­ture of lar­gesse.

  ‘Hey, he doesn’t mean it. Burrich, you don’t bribe guards like that, you’re go­ing to get your­self tossed in a cell, too.’ Blade stopped hast­ily, mak­ing apo­lo­gies as he hur­ried to gather up the spilled coins. The guards stopped along­side him and I saw a hand make a furt­ive trip from floor to pocket.

  Sud­denly Burrich’s face peered in my win­dow. For a mo­ment we stood eye to eye at the barred win­dow. Grief and out­rage battled in his face. His eyes were webbed red from his drink­ing, and his breath was strong with it. The fab­ric of his shirt showed ragged where the buck crest had been torn from it. He glared at me, then, as he looked at me, his eyes widened in shock. For a mo­ment our gaze held, and I thought some­thing of un­der­stand­ing and farewell passed between us. Then he leaned back and spat full in my face.

  ‘That, for you,’ he snarled. ‘That for my life, which you took from me. All the hours, all the days I spent upon you. Bet­ter that you had lain down and died amongst the beasts be­fore you let this come to pass. They’re go­ing to hang you, boy. Regal’s hav­ing the gal­lows built, over wa­ter, like the old wis­dom says. They’ll hang you, then cut you up and burn you down to bones. Noth­ing left to bury. He’s prob­ably afraid the dogs would dig you up again. You’d like that, hey, boy? Bur­ied like a bone, for some dog to dig up later? Bet­ter to just lie down and die right where you are.’

  I had re­coiled from him when he spat at me. Now I stood back from my door, sway­ing on my feet while he gripped the bars and stared in at me, his eyes wide and bright with mad­ness and drink.

  ‘You’re so good with the Wit, they say. Why don’t you change into a rat and scuttle out of there? Huh?’ He leaned his fore­head against the bars and peered in at me. Al­most pens­ively, he said, ‘Bet­ter that than to hang, whelp. Change into a beast and run off with your tail between
your legs. If you can … I heard you can … they say you can turn into a wolf. Well, un­less you can, you’re go­ing to hang. Hang by your neck, chok­ing and kick­ing …’ His voice trailed off. His dark eyes locked with mine. They were teary with drink. ‘Bet­ter to lie down and die right there than hang.’ Sud­denly he seemed full of fury. ‘Maybe I’ll help you lie down and die!’ he threatened through grit­ted teeth. ‘Bet­ter you die my way than Regal’s!’ He began to wrest at the bars, shak­ing the door back and forth against its locks.

  The guards were in­stantly on him, one to an arm, tug­ging and curs­ing while he ig­nored them. Old Blade jigged up and down be­hind them, say­ing, ‘Give it up, come on, Burrich, you had your say, come on, man, be­fore there’s real trouble.’

  They did not pry him loose, but he gave it up sud­denly, just drop­ping his arms to his side. It caught the guards by sur­prise and they both stumbled back. I clutched at the barred win­dow.

  ‘Burrich.’ It was hard to make my mouth form words. ‘I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry.’ I took a breath, tried to find some words to end some of the tor­ment in his eyes. ‘No one should blame you. You did the best with me you could.’

  He shook his head at me, his face con­tort­ing with grief and an­ger. ‘Lie down and die, boy. Just lie down and die.’ He turned and walked away from me. Blade was walk­ing back­wards, apo­lo­giz­ing a hun­dred times over to the two flustered guards who fol­lowed him up the cor­ridor. I watched them go, and then watched Burrich’s shadow go lurch­ing off, while Blade’s stayed a bit to mol­lify the guards.

  I swiped at the spittle on my swollen face and went slowly back to my stone bench. I sat a long time, re­mem­ber­ing. From the be­gin­ning, he had warned me off the Wit. The first dog that I had ever bon­ded to, he had mer­ci­lessly taken from me. I had fought him for that dog, re­pelled at him with every bit of strength I had, and he had just de­flec­ted it back at me. So hard I had not even at­temp­ted to re­pel any­one for years after that. And when he had re­len­ted, ig­nor­ing if not ac­cept­ing my bond with the wolf, it had re­boun­ded onto him. The Wit. All those times he had warned me, and all those times I had been so sure I knew what I was do­ing.