Royal Assassin tft-2

by Robin Hobb

  They were at my door, it was swinging open. Fear seized me in its jaws and shook me. Almost I lifted my cuff to my mouth and chewed the pellet from my sleeve right then. Instead, I gripped the tiny paper packet in my fist and made a determined resolution to forget about it.

  The same man with the torch, the same two guards. The same command. "You. On your feet."

  I pushed Brawndy's cloak aside. One of the guards was still human enough to pale at what he saw. The other two were stolid. And when I could not move swiftly enough to suit them, one seized me by the arm and jerked me to my feet. I cried out wordlessly with pain; I could not help it. And that response set me to trembling with fear. If I could not keep from crying out, how could I hold my defenses against Will?

  They took me from my cell and down the hall. I do not say I walked. All my bruises had stiffened in the night. The beating had reopened the sword cuts on my right forearm and on my thigh. Those pains, too, had been renewed. Pain was like air now; I moved through it, I breathed it in and out of myself. In the center of the guardroom, one shoved me and I fell. I lay on the floor on my side. I saw no point to struggling to sit up; I had no dignity to save. Better that they thought I could not stand. While I could, I would be still and marshall whatever strength I could still call my own. Slowly, laboriously, I cleared myself and began to set the guards on my mind. Over and over, through the pain haze, I went over the Skill walls I had erected, strengthening them, sealing myself away behind them. The walls of my mind were what I must guard, not the flesh of my body. Around me in the room, men lined the walls. They shuffled, and spoke quietly among themselves, waiting. I scarcely noticed them. My world was my walls and my pain.

  There was the creak and draft of an opened door. Regal came in. Will walked behind him, carelessly radiating Skill strength. I was aware of him as I had never before been aware of a man. Even without sight, I could sense him, the shape of him, the heat of the Skill that burned inside him. He was dangerous. Regal supposed he was only a tool. I dared a tiny satisfaction in knowing Regal did not know the perils of such a tool as Will.

  Regal took his chair. Someone brought a small table for him. I heard a bottle opened, then smelled wine as it was poured. The pain had tuned my senses to an unbearable keenness. I listened to Regal drink. I refused to acknowledge how much I longed for it.

  "Dear me. Look at him. Do you suppose we have gone too far, Will?" Something in the arch amusement in Regal's voice informed me that he had taken more than wine today. Smoke, perhaps? So early? The wolf had said dawn. Regal would never be up at dawn… something was wrong with my time sense.

  Will walked slowly toward me, stood over me. I did not try to move to see his face. I gripped my tiny store of strength firmly. He nudged me sharply with his foot and I gasped despite myself. At almost the same instant he slammed his Skill strength against me. There, at least, I held firm. Will took a short breath through his nose, snorted it out. He walked back to Regal.

  "Your Majesty. You've done almost as much as you can to his body, without risking damage that would plainly show even a month hence. But within, he still resists. Pain can distract him from warding his mind, but it does not inherently weaken his Skill strength. I do not think you will break him this way."

  "I did not ask you that, Will!" Regal rebuked him sharply. I listened to him shift himself to a more comfortable position. "Ah, this takes too long. My dukes grow impatient. He must be broken today." Almost pensively, he asked Will, "Almost as much as I can, you say, to his body? What then would you suggest as the next step?"

  "Leave him alone with me. I can get what you wish from him."

  "No." Regal's refusal was flat. "I know what you want from him, Will. You see him as a fat wineskin, full of Skill strength, which you would like to drain. Well, perhaps, at the end, there will be a way for you to have him. But not just yet. I want him to stand before the Dukes and confess himself a traitor. More, I want him to grovel before the throne and beg for mercy. I will have him denounce all those who have defied me. He, himself, shall accuse them. No one will doubt it when he says they are traitors. Let Duke Brawndy see his own daughter accused, let all the court hear that the Lady Patience who cries so loudly for justice has herself betrayed the crown. And for him… that candle maker girl, that Molly."

  My heart lurched sideways inside me.

  "I have not yet found her, my lord," Will ventured.

  "Silence!" Regal thundered. Almost, he sounded like King Shrewd. "Do not hearten him with that. She need not be found to be declared a traitor by his own lips. We can find her at our leisure. He can go to his death, knowing she will follow him, betrayed by his words. I will cleanse Buckkeep from dung heap to tower top of all who have sought to betray me and defy me!" He lifted his cup in a toast to himself and drank deeply.

  He sounded, I thought to myself, very like Queen Desire had in her cups. One part braggart to one part sniveling coward. He would fear everyone he did not control. And the next day he would fear those he controlled even more.

  Regal set his wine cup down with a thud. He leaned back in his chair. "Well. Let's continue, shall we? Kelfry, stand him up for us."

  Kelfry was a competent man who took no joy in his work. He was not gentle, but neither was he rougher than he needed to be. He stood behind me, gripping me by the upper arms to keep me upright. Hod had not trained him. I knew if I snapped my head back swiftly, I could break his nose and possibly take out some of his front teeth. Snapping my head back swiftly struck me as only slightly simpler than picking up the floor under my own feet would be. I stood, hands curled defensively over my belly, pushing the pain aside, gathering my strength. After a moment I lifted my head and regarded Regal.

  I ran my tongue about the inside of my mouth to free my lips from my teeth, then spoke. "You killed your own father."

  Regal stiffened in his chair. The man holding me tensed. I leaned in his arms, forcing him to support my weight.

  "Serene and Justin did it, but you ordered it," I said quietly. Regal came to his feet.

  "But not before we had Skilled to Verity." I made my voice louder. The effort broke sweat on me. "Verity's alive, and he knows everything." Regal was coming at me, with Will right behind him. I swung my gaze to Will, put threat in my voice. "He knows about you, too, Will. He knows it all."

  The guard held me as Regal backhanded me. Once. Another slap, and I felt the swollen skin of my face split under the impact. Regal drew his fist back. I set myself to take it, pushed away all pain, centered myself, got ready.

  "Look out!" Will yelled, and sprang to knock Regal aside.

  I had wanted it too badly, he had Skilled what I intended to do. As Regal swung I jerked free of my guard, slipped aside from Regal's blow, then stepped in. With one hand I seized the back of Regal's neck, to pull his face toward my other hand that gripped the now crushed paper of powder. My intent had been to rub it into his nose and mouth, to hope against hope he'd get enough of it to kill him.

  Will spoiled it all. My swollen fingers would not close on Regal's neck. Will snatched Regal from my wooden grasp, swung him sideways away from me. As Will's shoulder collided with my chest I reached for his face instead, ground the torn paper and fine white powder into his nose and mouth and eyes. Most of it floated up in a fine cloud between us. I saw him gasp at the bitterness and then we were down, both of us, under a wave of Regal's guards.

  I dove for unconsciousness, but it eluded me. I was struck, kicked, and throttled before Regal's frenzied cries of "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" seemed to matter to anyone save me. I felt them get off me, felt them drag Will from under me, but I could not see. Blood was sheeting down over my face. My tears mingled with it. My last chance, and I had failed. I had not even gotten Will. Oh, he would be sick for a few days, but I doubted he would die of it. Even now I heard them muttering over him.

  "Take him to a healer, then." I heard Regal finally give the command. "See if he can figure out what's wrong with him. Did one of you kick him in the
head?"

  I thought that he spoke of me, until I heard the sounds of Will being carried out. So either I had gotten more into him than I had thought, or someone had kicked him in the head. Perhaps his gasp had pulled it into his lungs. I had no idea what it would do there. As I felt his Skill presence fading it was relief almost as blessed as surcease from pain. Cautiously I relaxed my vigilance against him. It was like setting down a terribly heavy weight. Another thought blessed me. They didn't know. No one had seen the paper and powder, it had happened too quickly for them. They might not even think of poison until it was too late for him.

  "Is the Bastard dead?" Regal demanded angrily. "If he is, I swear, every man of you will hang!"

  Someone stooped hastily beside me, to lay fingers at the pulse in my throat. "He's alive," a soldier said gruffly, almost sullenly. Someday Regal would learn not to threaten his own guard. I hoped he'd be taught it by an arrow through his back.

  A moment later someone dashed a bucket of cold water over me. The shock of it jarred every pain I had to new frenzy. I pulled my one eye open. The first thing I saw was the water and blood on the floor in front of me. If all that blood was all mine, I was in trouble. Dazedly, I tried to think of whose else it could be. My mind did not seem to be working very well. Time seemed to be flowing in jumps. Regal was standing over me, angry and disheveled, and then suddenly he was sitting in his chair. In and out. Light and dark and light again.

  Someone knelt beside me, ran competent hands over me. Burrich? No. That was a dream from long ago. This man had blue eyes and the nasal twang of a Farrow man. "He's bleeding a lot, King Regal. But we can stop that." Someone put pressure on my brow. A cup of watered wine, held against my cracked lips, splashed into my mouth. I choked on it. "You see, he's alive. I'd leave off, for today, Your Majesty. I doubt if he'll be able to answer any more questions before tomorrow. He'll just faint on you." A calm professional opinion. Whoever it was stretched me out on the floor again and left.

  A spasm rattled through me. Seizure coming soon. Good thing Will was gone. Didn't think I could keep my walls up through a seizure.

  "Oh, take him away." Regal, disgusted and disappointed. "This has been nothing but a waste of my time today." His chair's legs scraped on the floor as he left it. I heard the sounds of his boots on the stone floor as he strode from the room.

  Someone grabbed me by the shirtfront, jerked me to my feet. I could not even scream for the pain. "Stupid piece of dung," he snarled at me. "You'd better not die. I'm not going to take lashes over the likes of you dying."

  "Great threat, Verde," someone mocked him. "What are you going to do to him after he's dead?"

  "Shut up. It'll be your back flayed to the bone as much as mine. Let's get him out of here and clean this up."

  The cell. The blank wall of it. They had left me on the floor, facing away from the door. Somehow that seemed unfair of them. I'd have to do all the work of rolling over just to see if they'd left me any water.

  No. It was too much trouble.

  Are you coming now?

  I really want to, Nighteyes. But I just don't know how.

  Changer. Changer! My brother! Changer.

  What is it?

  You have been silent for so long. Are you coming now?

  I have been… silent?

  Yes. I thought you had died, without coming to me first. I could not reach you.

  Probably a seizure. I didn't know it had happened. But now I am right here, Nighteyes. Right here.

  Then come to me. Hurry, before you die.

  A moment. Let us be sure of this.

  I tried to think of a reason not to. I knew there had been some, but I could no longer recall them. Changer, he had called me. My own wolf, calling me that, just as the Fool or Chade called me a catalyst. Well. Time to change things for Regal. The last thing I could do was make sure I died before Regal broke me. If I had to go down, I would do it alone. No words of mine would implicate anyone else. I hoped the Dukes would demand to see my body.

  It took a long time to get my arm from the floor to my chest. My lips were cracked and swollen, my teeth aching in my gums. But I put my shirt cuff to my mouth and found the tiny lump of the leaf pellet inside the fabric. I bit down at it as hard as I could, then sucked on it. After a moment the taste of carryme flooded my mouth. It was not unpleasant. Pungent. As the herb deadened the pain in my mouth, I could chew at my sleeve more strongly. Stupidly, I tried to be careful of the porcupine quill. Didn't want to get a quill in my lip.

  It really hurts when that happens.

  I know, Nighteyes.

  Come to me.

  I'm trying. Give me a moment.

  How does one leave one's body behind? I tried to ignore it, to be aware of myself only as Nighteyes. Keen nose. Lying on my side, chewing diligently at a lump of snow wadded up in the space between my toes. I tasted snow and my own paw as I nibbled and licked it away. I looked up. Evening coming on. It would soon be a good time to hunt. I stood up, shook myself all over.

  That's right, Nighteyes encouraged me.

  But there was still that thread, that tiny awareness of a stiff and aching body on a cold stone floor. Just to think of it made it more real. A tremor ran through it, rattling its bones and teeth. Seizure coming. Big one this time.

  Suddenly it was all so easy. Such an easy choice. Leave that body for this one. It didn't work very well anymore anyway. Stuck in a cage. No point to keeping it. No point to being a man at all.

  I'm here.

  I know. Let us hunt.

  And we did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. Wolf Days

  THE EXERCISE FOR centering oneself is a simple one. Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. Then, in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself.

  There is a cleanness to life that can be had when you but hunt and eat and sleep. In the end, no more than this is really needed by anyone. We ran alone, we the Wolf, and we lacked for nothing. We did not long for venison when a rabbit presented itself nor begrudge the ravens that came to pick through our leavings. Sometimes we remembered a different time and a different way. When we did, we wondered what had been so important about any of it. We did not kill what we could not eat, and we did not eat what we could not kill. Dusks and dawns were the best times for hunting, and other times were good for sleeping. Other than this, time had no meaning.

  For wolves, as for dogs, life is a briefer thing than for men, if you measure it by counting days and how many turns of a season one sees. But in two years, a cub wolf does all a man does in a score. He comes to the full of his strength and size, he learns all that is needful for him to be a hunter or a mate or a leader. The candle of his life burns briefer and brighter than a man's. In a decade of years, he does all that a man does in five or six times that many. A year passes for a wolf as a decade does for a man. Time is no miser when one lives always in the now.

  So we knew the nights and the days, the hunger and the filling. Savage joys and surprises. Snatch up a mouse, fling it up, eat it down with a snap. So good. To start a rabbit, to pursue it as it dodges and circles, then suddenly, to stretch your stride and seize it in a flurry of snow and fur. The shake that snaps its neck, and then the leisurely eating, the tearing open of its belly and nosing through the hot entrails, and then the thick meat of the haunches, the easy crunching of its backbone. Surfeit and sleep. And waken to hunt again.

  Chase a doe over pond ice, knowing we cannot make such a kill, but rejoicing in the hunt. When through the ice she goes, and we circle, circle, circle endlessly as she battles her hooves against the ice and finally clambers out, too weary to evade the teeth that slash her hamstrings, the fangs that close in her throat. Eating to satiation, not once, but twice from the carcass. A storm comes full of sleet to drive us to the den. Sleeping snug, nose to ta
il, while the wind flings icy rain and then snow about outside the den. Awake to pale light glistening in through a layer of snow. Dig out to snuff the clear cold day that is just fading. There is meat still on the doe, frozen red and sweet, ready to be dug from the snow. What can be more satisfying than to know of meat that is waiting for you?

  Come. We pause. No, the meat is waiting. We trot on.

  Come now. Come to me. I've meat for you.

  We've meat already. And closer.

  Nighteyes. Changer. Heart of the Pack summons you.

  We pause again. Shake all over. This is not comfortable. And what is Heart of the Pack to us? He is not pack. He pushes us. There is meat closer. It is decided. We go to the pond's edge. Here. Somewhere here. Ah. Dig down to her through the snow. The crows come to watch us, waiting for us to be finished.

  Nighteyes. Changer. Come. Come now. Soon it will be too late.

  The meat is frozen, crisp and red. Turn our head to use our back teeth to scissor it from the bones. A crow flies down, lands on the snow nearby. Hop, hop. He cocks his head. For sport, we lunge at him, put him to flight again. Our meat, all of it. Days and nights of meat.

  Come. Please. Come. Please. Come soon, come now. Come back to us. You are needed. Come. Come.

  He does not go away. We put back our ears, but still we hear him, come, come, come. He steals the pleasure from the meat with his whining. Enough. We have eaten enough for now. We will go, just to still him.

  Good. That's good. Come to me, come to me.

  We go, trotting through the gathering darkness. A rabbit sits up suddenly, scampers away across the snow. Shall we? No. Belly is full. Trot on. Cross a man's path, an open empty strip under the night sky. We fade across it swiftly, trot on through the woods that border it.

  Come to me. Come. Nighteyes, Changer, I summon you. Come to me.

  The forest ends. There is a cleared hillside below us, and beyond that a flat bare place, shelterless under the night sky. Too open. The crusted snow is untracked, but at the bottom of the hill, there are humans. Two. Heart of the Pack digs while another watches. Heart of the Pack digs fast and hard. His breath smokes in the night. The other has a light, a too bright light that shrinks the eye to behold. Heart of the Pack stops his digging. He looks up at us.