FF3 Assassin’s Fate

by Robin Hobb

  She seemed drunk on her own fury and righteousness. Instead of calming, she was a storm still building. ‘You, Dwalia, you promised you would follow Beloved and he would lead you to his secret. But at the last, he eluded you? Or did you choose to let him escape you?’ She pointed a trembling, skinny finger at Dwalia. ‘So, set aside, for now, those luriks you led into slaughter. Set aside the priceless white horses, and even the elixirs you squandered on your experiments! Where is Beloved?’

  Dwalia lifted her head. She spoke with contained but unconcealed anger. ‘Dead. I am certain he is dead. Just as dead as you wished him to be. And he died the way I wished him to die, at his lover’s hands! Over and over FitzChivalry Farseer sank his knife into Beloved’s belly, for he did not even know him after all I had done to change him! No healthy man could have survived such wounds. And Beloved was poisoned and blinded and broken even before he took them: I had made sure of that.’ Dwalia stood taller. ‘So I am certain he is dead. And by allowing his Catalyst to take Beloved’s dying body, I drew them both away from my prey. From what they both had guarded and thought they had well concealed.’ Once again she jerked my collar and hauled me to my feet. ‘I tell you, this is the one all those prophecies foretold. And!’ she shouted the word as Capra opened her faded lips to speak. ‘And I believe this child is not only the Unexpected Son but that she carries Beloved’s bloodline! The bloodline that Symphe and Fellowdy and Coultrie so wanted to develop! I bring this to you. I, Dwalia!’ Her eyes roved over them and in a low voice she added, ‘Do you recall when you would not let me go with Ilistore? When you sent her out without me, with no one to guard her back? Just as I have succeeded with this, I tell you plainly. Had I gone with her, she would never have fallen!’

  She held me displayed for them, a rabbit she had snared. The lavishly dressed man in yellow looked at me and said in a low, awed voice, ‘She does have the look of Beloved about her chin and the set of her ears. She could be his get.’

  ‘SHE!’ Capra bellowed at him. ‘Do you know the word, Fellowdy? Do you hear it? Do you understand what it means? Often I have wondered if you know the difference between male and female, or if you care! This is not the Unexpected Son. The best she might be is a bastard daughter of a traitorous wretch. Even if she is Beloved’s get, who knows what other blood is mingled in her? She’s a mongrel. A mongrel from a tainted bloodline that has brought us nothing but disaster.’ She shook her head, and her long silvery hair moved softly. ‘Dwalia, you have been gone from us for three years. And in those years, the dreams of the luriks have stacked and multiplied. You speak of how you have shifted events to find this child, yet I know you have shifted them more than you can grasp. We are inundated with nightmares about the wrath of the Unexpected Son. Terrifying visions of the vengeance of the Twice-lived Prophet make the young ones wake crying out in fear. Dreams of a Destroyer! Oh, yes, you have manipulated events, but your petty vengeance has cascaded us into a very dangerous place. “Blind he sees the way, and the wolf comes at his heels!” The prophecy of the Unexpected Son had been fulfilled, to our detriment. It was done, and we looked to the newer dreams to find our way. But you, you have “wakened the sleeping wolf, and stirred the dragons in him to fury.” You have set us on a dark path indeed with your vanity and your anger, and your selfish need for vengeance!’

  Dwalia was stronger than she looked. I already knew that from the times we had fought. But now she lifted me from my feet and carried me forward, kicking and struggling.

  Then she threw me at Capra.

  I hit the edge of the dais in front of the blue-clad woman and fell to the hard floor, clutching my bruised ribs. There was no air left in my body. I could not squeak, let alone scream.

  ‘You stupid old woman!’ Dwalia did not roar the words but spoke them in a dark, cold voice. Two men with spears seized her by the arms and dragged her away but even as they did so, she spoke on as coolly as if they hadn’t touched her. ‘You refused to read what my examination of the dreams told me. You wouldn’t listen to me the first time that I warned you about that creature you had taken in. I told you he would free the dragons. You said he could not. I begged you to let me go with Ilistore, that I might protect her. You all refused. You said Kebal Rawbread would be enough. But he wasn’t, and so she died. She died horribly, alone and broken and cold, and the dragons you so fear were loosed upon the world.’

  Dwalia was not struggling. The guards held her arms but looked as if they felt foolish. Vindeliar was rocking back and forth where he knelt, breathing in noisy nose gasps. I lay where I had fallen, trying for air, watching her.

  ‘Beloved is dead,’ she went on. ‘I know it, I feel it. I’ve killed him in the worst way he could possibly imagine, and I’ve stolen the weapon he and his Catalyst were shaping to use against us. I’ve brought you the Unexpected Son from the prophecies, and all you can do is sit up there and refuse to let me enlighten you! I expect Capra to ignore my revelations; she has always hated me. And all Fellowdy can think of is his lechery, while Coultrie fears that if he speaks any truth, you will all turn on him and rebuke him for the imposter he has always been. But Symphe? I thought better of you. I thought you were wiser. I always believed that one day you would throw the other three down and rule Clerres as it should be ruled. But no. You hold the threads of all time in your hands and yet you will let them unravel in our lifetime! I’ve brought you what you need to make up for how stupid you were about Beloved, but you sit there like toads on stones and do nothing.’

  ‘How dare you attack me? How dare you speak to any of us in such a tone? Guardsman! Ten lashes.’ Capra ordered one of the guards who held Dwalia, her voice as cold as ice.

  The man released Dwalia to his companion’s safe-keeping and caught her by both wrists. Still she did not struggle. The first guardsman bowed precisely to the Four and swiftly left the room.

  ‘Twenty,’ Coultrie countered. ‘Those were exquisite horses. All lost to me now.’ There was no regret or sympathy in his voice. He might have been asking for a drink of water.

  ‘Twenty!’ Capra was outraged. ‘How can you pretend your injury is greater than mine! How dare you!’

  ‘Ten, then. Ten! But those were fine horses.’ Coultrie subsided into a sulk, fussing with a green silk handkerchief he pulled from his sleeve. ‘Irreplaceable,’ he muttered, drawing another glare from Capra.

  ‘So messy. So … physical. Ten. Now. Let us be done with this.’ Fellowdy closed his eyes wearily as if it were all too inconvenient for him even to consider.

  The beautiful woman, Symphe, spoke last. ‘Dwalia, you have gone too far. Too often I have allowed you to speak in blunt terms, but your insults are beyond honesty. I cannot protect you from this. Five lashes,’ she suggested. There was regret in her voice, but not a great deal of it.

  Capra turned a furious gaze on her. ‘Five? FIVE? You insult me, too! You insult Coultrie, who lost a generation of steeds. She does not say she killed Beloved, only that she believes he is dead! She has disobeyed and defied us and—’

  ‘Ten then,’ Symphe amended. ‘Let it be ten, and let it be over. It has been too long a day already.’

  Capra was shaking her head. ‘We will have this be over, and leave this chamber. But this evening, I wish to see all of you in my tower chamber.’

  I heard the guard’s boots, his heels striking the floor very precisely, the jingling of the chain a music to the beat of his footsteps. I sat up slowly, my back to the dais, feeling dizzy and sick. I watched dully as the guard lifted a small panel of the smooth white floor and attached the chains to a ring there.

  Dwalia still sounded very calm and rational. ‘No. It’s not fair. It’s not right. No.’ The guard who dragged her forward paid no attention to her words or her attempts to sink her nails into his forearm and free herself. She braced her feet on the smooth floor yet he dragged her effortlessly. When he reached his partner, the other man seized her hair and clacked two pieces of metal around her throat. She struggled while he put the clips throu
gh the collar. Both guards stepped back abruptly and there she was, Dwalia who had terrorized me for so long, chained like a dog, the heavy loops of metal from the collar around her neck secured to the ring in the floor.

  It was a short chain. She could not stand upright. For a moment, she stood bent over, glaring at the Four. Then she hunched down, crossing her arms on her chest and tucking her face in as tightly as she could.

  I could hear Vindeliar breathing loudly, a shrill note to each breath he expelled, but he did not move from where he knelt. This was not new to either of them, I realized as the two guards stepped back. One gave the other a stick to match the one he held. No. Not a stick. Each unfurled short lashes attached to heavy braided leather handles. Whips. They shook them loose in an expert fashion and each took a position to either side of Dwalia.

  ‘You are fools!’ she shouted in one last attempt at outrage, but her voice shook with fear as one of the guards made his lash whistle in a practice swipe.

  Then it began.

  It was not ten lashes. It was forty. Ten decreed by each of the Four. The guards alternated their blows, the lashes rising and falling as rhythmically as a smith’s hammer. Dwalia could not escape. Terribly, between blows, she almost had time to decide where the lash would next fall. But the guardsmen were experienced or perhaps just cruel. Always the lash seemed to fall on fresh flesh, or cleverly bisect the welt his partner had just created.

  Her garments leapt at each blow. At first, she stayed hunched where she was. The lovely cloth of the back of the dress the captain had bought for his lover frayed and finally fell away. She began to give short shrieks and to scuttle like a beetle all around the ring in the floor. The guards did not care. She could not evade them. Her flesh welted and oozed, and droplets of blood began to speckle the floor and the strong bared arms of the guardsmen. Before they finished, the lashes were slapping raw meat and flinging arcs of blood. Forty had never seemed so large a number before.

  I covered my ears. I closed my eyes. Somehow I still heard the sounds that she made. They were not screams nor curses nor even pleas. They were terrible sounds. My eyes kept opening, no matter how tightly I closed them. There she was, the person who had ruined my life, the person I hated most in the whole world, being torn and slashed and ripped and tattered by whips of leather. They did to her what I had so longed to do to her, and it was disgusting and horrifying and unbearable. I was a little trapped animal. I panted and whined and wept but no one took any notice of me. I peed myself, soaking my trousers and making a puddle at my feet. I learned in that afternoon that I would have saved her, if I could. That while I might hate her enough to kill her, I did not think I could ever hate anyone enough to torture them.

  Dwalia managed to protect her eyes, but it cost her damage to her hands. The tips of the lashes curled cleverly to slice her shoulder and then lick a scarlet tip across her cheek. She could hide her face in her hands, but then the backs of her hands were vulnerable. She had begun with her arms crossed on her chest and her hands tucked protectively close, but eventually she ended collapsed on her side, her legs drawn up to her belly and her face hidden in the crook of one bloodied arm.

  Her punishment was done with swift efficiency but in those long and paralysed moments, I felt the rushing, dragging, shifting currents of time. Every stripe fell in a predetermined place on her body. Every twitch of her shuddering flesh changed that place. But it changed it in a logical and defined way. While my stomach churned at what they did to her, a calm part of my mind made orderly sense of every violent action and her reaction to it. I saw that if she moved this way, the guard would shift his arm, and the lash would strike there, and the blood would fly just so. It was all predetermined. None of it was random.

  In that horrifying recognition I suddenly saw how each action we had taken had moved us forward to this place and time and to this event. As late as this morning, there had been a thousand opportunities to choose a different path that would not have led us to this bloody resolution. Dwalia could have chosen to remain Lady Aubretia and gone to the inn to wait for her captain. She could have sent a messenger bird ahead to Symphe and arranged a secret meeting. She could have leapt overboard and drowned herself. Or stayed on the ship. There had been so many ways to divert her path to avoid this disaster. Why had not she seen and known or guessed this would happen?

  Why had I not foreseen that she would drag me into this with her?

  I did not know enough of these people to predict what would happen to me.

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Thirty-nine.’

  The guards had been counting, each calling the strike of his own lash. Now they chorused, ‘Forty!’ and both whips fell. Slowly, slowly they drew the leather straps back and coiled the wet leather thongs around the handle. Their fingers were bloody, their strong arms and stoic faces speckled with blood. Dwalia remained where she was, panting. She had long ceased crying out. What was the sense in crying out when it would avail you nothing? All the nights I had whispered pleas for my father to find me had availed me nothing. The wash of futility I felt left me cold and empty. And free to act.

  Capra cleared her throat. If she was moved at all by the horror she had inflicted on Dwalia, it did not show in her voice as she issued her commands. ‘Take her to the lowest levels. Confine her there. Vindeliar, go to your chamber and resume your old duties tomorrow.’

  Vindeliar was already in motion, scuttling for the door. He looked back once at Dwalia, his mouth turned down in a grimace. Then he was sidling out the door and it closed behind him. It took both guards to get Dwalia to her feet. One unfastened the chain from her neck as the other unhooked it from the floor ring and returned the panel to its place. Then each guard took an arm and stood her up between them. She could not walk but lurched and stumbled and dragged. The sounds of pain she made were pitiful. I stayed where I was. For one awful moment, she lifted her head. Her eyes burned with hatred of me. Her hands had bloody welts on the back where she had sheltered her face from the lashes. She pointed a shaking finger at me and said something.

  ‘What was that she said?’ Coultrie demanded.

  No one spoke; perhaps no one else had made out her words. I had.

  ‘Your turn now.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Hand and Foot

  A rat’s head on a stick. No one holds the stick but it is shaken at the dreamer. The rat squeaks. ‘The bait is the trap, the trapper the trapped!’ The rat’s mouth is red, its teeth yellow; its eyes are black and shining. It appears to be the sort of large brown rat often seen near the docks of Clerres town. It has a black-and-white ruff about its neck, and the staff it is fixed to is green and yellow.

  Capra’s Dream 903872, recorded by Lingstra Okuw

  ‘Well, that was unpleasant,’ Symphe muttered.

  ‘Blame yourself,’ Capra countered. ‘You created that moment. Releasing Beloved, lying to me. Allowing that sour-faced wretch to think she had the perspicacity of a White Prophet. You encouraged her to create this mess. I suppose I must be the one to set events back on their proper course.’

  ‘I will take charge of the child,’ Symphe announced.

  I heard their voices as one might hear flies buzzing at a window. Dwalia was gone. Only her spattered and smeared blood remained. Vindeliar was gone. I was alone in this place they had brought me to. I stared up at the lovely woman. Pretty did not mean kind. She did not look at me.

  ‘That you shall not,’ Capra announced.

  ‘We should all have access to her, to determine her value,’ Fellowdy suggested.

  Capra laughed low. ‘We know what value you would give her, Fellowdy. No.’

  Coultrie spoke in a low voice. ‘Do away with the creature. Right now. It will only cause division among us, and we’ve had enough of that. Recall how Beloved’s return set us against one another.’ He frowned so severely that the cosmetics on his face flaked a sprinkling of powder.

  ‘“Never do that which you can’t u
ndo, until you’ve perceived what you can’t do once you’ve done it.” That is among our oldest teachings, you idiot! We need to summon collators and search for any possible references to her.’ Symphe spoke smoothly.

  ‘That will take days!’ Coultrie objected.

  ‘As you are not the one who will be doing the work, why should you care?’ Fellowdy replied. In a quieter voice, he added, ‘As if you could understand the dreams, having never had any of your own.’

  ‘Do you think I am deaf?’ Coultrie demanded angrily, to which Fellowdy smiled and replied, ‘Of course not. You are merely blind to the futures.’

  ‘Enough!’ Capra snapped. She glanced at me and I looked away. I feared to have her look into my eyes. Something in her stare seemed to gloat, as if she kept to herself some bit of knowledge. ‘Symphe, I propose that we hold her in the upper cells. In safety. In health. Perhaps she is nothing but a blonde child stolen from scutwork in FitzChivalry’s home. Dwalia offered us no proof that she is otherwise. If she were truly of Beloved’s lineage, she would be dreaming by now, and Dwalia would have offered the records of her dreams to us as proof of her value. I suspect she is nothing but a ruse, an excuse for Dwalia’s losses.’

  ‘Then why not leave her with me?’ Symphe demanded. ‘I could use another maidservant.’

  Capra’s look was deadly. ‘A ruse can be used more than once, dear girl. Dwalia claims Beloved is dead. She said nothing of FitzChivalry, his Catalyst. If this child is his or has value to him we may find that once more we deal with the Unexpected Son. The real one. The one who aided Beloved to thwart us. So, she needs to be confined until we determine if there is any truth at all to Dwalia’s tale. Until we have wrung the full truth from both Dwalia and that monster she has cultivated.’