by Robin Hobb
“To Netta I gave a triple sleeping draft one evening with her water. I had her body bathed, her hair groomed, and sent her back to her village to be decently buried. At least one family could put finis to a tale of Forging. Most others must wonder, for months and years, what has become of the one they once held dear. Most are better off not knowing.” There were, at that time, over one thousand souls known to have been Forged.
* * *
Burrich had meant what he said. He had nothing more to do with me. I was no longer welcome down at the stables and kennels. Cob especially took savage pleasure in this. Although he was often gone with Regal, when he was about the stables he would often step to block my entry. “Allow me to bring you your horse, master,” he would say obsequiously. “The stablemaster prefers that grooms handle animals within the stables.” And so I must stand, like some incompetent lordling, while Sooty was saddled and brought for me. Cob himself mucked her stall and brought her feed and groomed her, and it ate at me like acid to see how quickly she welcomed him back. She was only a horse, I told myself, and not to be blamed. But it was one more abandonment.
I had too much time, suddenly. Mornings had always been spent working for Burrich. Now they were mine. Hod was busy training green men for defense. I was welcome to drill with them, but it was all lessons I had learned long ago. Fedwren was gone for the summer, as he was every summer. I could not think of a way to apologize to Patience, and I did not even think about Molly. Even my forays to the taverns in Buckkeep had become solitary ones. Kerry had apprenticed to a puppeteer, and Dirk gone for a sailor. I was idle and alone.
It was a summer of misery, and not just for me. While I was lonely and bitter and outgrowing all my clothes, while I snapped and snarled at any foolish enough to speak to me and drank myself insensible several times a week, I was still aware of how the Six Duchies were racked. The Red-Ship Raiders, bolder than ever before, harried our coastline. This summer, in addition to threats, they finally began to make demands. Grain, cattle, the right to take whatever they wished from our seaports, the right to beach their boats and live off our lands and people for the summer, their choice of our folk for slaves…each demand was more intolerable than the last, and the only thing more intolerable than the demands were the Forgings that followed each refusal by the King.
Common folk were abandoning the seaport and waterfront towns. One could not blame them, but it left our coastline even more vulnerable. More soldiers were hired, and more, and so the levies were raised to pay them, and folk grumbled under the burden of the taxes and their fear of the Red-Ship Raiders. Even stranger were the Outislanders who came to our shore in their family ships, their raiding vessels left behind, to beg asylum of our people, and to tell wild tales of chaos and tyranny in the Out Islands, where the Red-Ships now ruled completely. They were a mixed blessing, perhaps. They were cheaply hired as soldiers, though few really trusted them. But at least their tales of the Out Islands under Red-Ship domination were harrowing enough to keep anyone from thinking of giving in to the Raiders’ demands.
About a month after my return, Chade opened his door to me. I was sullen over his neglect of me and went more slowly up his stairs than ever I had before. But when I got there, he looked up from crushing seeds with a pestle with a face full of weariness. “I am glad to see you,” he said, with nothing of gladness in his voice.
“That’s why you were so swift to welcome me back,” I observed sourly.
He stopped his grinding. “I’m sorry. I thought perhaps you would need a time alone, to recover yourself.” He looked back to his seeds. “It has not been an easy winter and spring for me, either. Shall we try to put the time behind us, and go on?”
It was a gentle, reasonable suggestion. I knew it was wise.
“Have I any choice?” I asked sarcastically.
Chade finished grinding his seed. He scraped it into a finely woven sieve and put it over a cup to drip. “No,” he said at last, as if he had considered it well. “No, you don’t, and neither do I. In many things, we have no choice.” He looked at me, his eyes running up and down me, and then poked at his seed again. “You,” he said, “will stop drinking anything but water or tea for the rest of the summer. Your sweat stinks of wine. And for one so young, your muscles are lax. A winter of Galen’s meditations has done your body no good at all. See that you exercise it. Take it upon yourself, as of today, to climb to Verity’s tower four times a day. You will take him food, and the teas I will show you how to prepare. You will never show him a sullen face, but will always be cheerful and friendly. Perhaps a while of waiting on Verity will convince you that I have had reasons for my attention not being centered on you. That is what you will do each day you are at Buckkeep. There will be some days when you will be fulfilling other assignments for me.”
It had not taken many words from Chade to awaken shame in myself. My perception of my life crashed from high tragedy to juvenile self-pity in a matter of moments. “I have been idle,” I admitted.
“You have been stupid,” Chade agreed. “You had a month in which to take charge of your own life. You behaved like…a spoiled brat. I have no wonder that Burrich is disgusted with you.”
I had long ago stopped being surprised at what Chade knew. But this time I was sure he did not know the real reason, and I had no desire to share it with him.
“Have you discovered yet who tried to kill him?”
“I haven’t…tried, really.”
Now Chade looked disgusted, and then puzzled. “Boy, you are not yourself at all. Six months ago you would have torn the stables apart to know such a secret. Six months ago, given a month’s holiday, you would have filled each day. What troubles you?”
I looked down, feeling the truth of his words. I wanted to tell him everything that had befallen me; I wanted not to say a word of it to anyone. “I’ll tell you all I do know of the attack on Burrich.” And I did.
“And the one who saw all this,” he asked when I had finished. “Did he know the man who attacked Burrich?”
“He didn’t get a good look at him,” I hedged. Useless to tell Chade that I knew exactly how he smelled, but had only a vague visual image.
Chade was quiet for a moment. “Well, as much as you can, keep an ear to the earth. I should like to know who has grown so brave as to kill the King’s stablemaster in his own stable.”
“Then you do not think it was just some personal quarrel of Burrich’s?” I asked carefully.
“Perhaps it was. But we will not jump to conclusions. To me, it has the feel of a gambit. Someone is building to something, but has missed their first block. To our advantage, I hope.”
“Can you tell me why you think so?”
“I could, but I will not. I want to leave your mind free to find its own assumptions, independent of mine. Now come. I will show you the teas.”
I was more than a bit hurt that he asked me nothing about my time with Galen or my test. He seemed to accept my failure as a thing expected. But as he showed me the ingredients he had chosen for Verity’s teas, I was horrified by the strength of the stimulants he was using.
I had seen little of my Verity, though Regal had been only too much in evidence. He had spent the last month coming and going. He was always just returning, or just leaving, and each cavalcade seemed richer and more ornate than the one before. It seemed to me he was using the excuse of his brother’s courting to feather himself more brightly than any peacock. Common opinion was that he must go so, to impress those he negotiated with. For myself, I saw it as a waste of coin that could have gone to defenses. When Regal was gone, I felt relief, for his antagonism toward me had taken a recent bound, and he had found sundry small ways to express it.
The brief times when I had seen Verity or the King, they had both looked harassed and worn. But Verity especially had seemed almost stunned. Impassive and distracted, he had noticed me only once, and then smiled
wearily and said I had grown. That had been the extent of our conversation. But I had noticed that he ate like an invalid, without appetite, eschewing meat and bread as if they were too great of an effort to chew and swallow and instead subsisting on porridges and soups.
“He is using the Skill too much. That much Shrewd has told me. But why it should drain him so, why it should burn the very flesh from his bones, he cannot explain to me. So I give him tonics and elixirs, and try to get him to rest. But he cannot. He dares not, he says. He tells me that only all his efforts are sufficient to delude the Red-Ship navigators, to send their ships onto the rocks, to discourage their captains. And so he rises from bed, and goes to his chair by a window, and there he sits, all the day.”
“And Galen’s coterie? Are they of no use to him?” I asked the question almost jealously, almost hoping to hear they were of no consequence.
Chade sighed. “I think he uses them as I would use carrier pigeons. He has sent them out to the towers, and he uses them to convey warnings to his soldiers, and to receive from them sightings of ships. But the task of defending the coast he trusts to no one else. Others, he tells me, would be too inexperienced; they might betray themselves to those they Skilled. I do not understand. But I know he cannot continue much longer. I pray for the end of summer, for winter storms to blow the Red-Ships home. Would there was someone to spell him at this work. I fear it will consume him.”
I took that as a rebuke for my failure and subsided into a sulky silence. I drifted around his chambers, finding them both familiar and strange after my months of absence. The apparatus for his herbal work was, as always, cluttered about. Slink was very much in evidence, with his smelly bits of bones in corners. As always, there was an assortment of tablets and scrolls by various chairs. This crop seemed to deal mostly with Elderlings. I wandered about, intrigued by the colored illustrations. One tablet, older and more elaborate than the rest, depicted an Elderling as a sort of gilded bird with a manlike head crowned with quillish hair. I began to piece out the words. It was in Piche, an ancient native tongue of Chalced, the southernmost Duchy. Many of the painted symbols had faded or flaked away from the old wood, and I had never been fluent in Piche. Chade came to stand at my elbow.
“You know,” he said gently, “it was not easy for me, but I kept my word. Galen demanded complete control of his students. He expressly stipulated that no one might contact you or interfere in any way with your discipline and instruction. And, as I told you, in the Queen’s Garden, I am blind and without influence.”
“I knew that,” I muttered.
“Yet I did not disagree with Burrich’s actions. Only my word to my king kept me from contacting you.” He paused cautiously. “It has been a difficult time, I know. I wish I could have helped you. And you should not feel too badly that you…”
“Failed.” I filled in the word while he searched for a gentler one. I sighed, and suddenly admitted my pain. “Let’s leave it, Chade. I can’t change it.”
“I know.” Then, even more carefully: “But perhaps we can use what you learned of the Skill. If you can help me understand it, perhaps I can devise better ways to spare Verity. For so many years the knowledge has been kept too secret…there is scarcely a mention of it in the old scrolls, save to say that such and such a battle was turned by the King’s Skill upon his soldiers, or such and such an enemy was confounded by the King’s Skill. Yet there is nothing of how it is done, or—”
Despair closed its grip on me again. “Leave it. It is not for bastards to know. I think I’ve proved that.”
A silence fell between us. At last Chade sighed heavily. “Well. That’s as may be. I’ve been looking into Forging as well, over these last few months. But all I’ve learned of it is what it is not, and what does not work to change it. The only cure I’ve found for it is the oldest one known to work on anything.”
I rolled and fastened the scroll I had been looking at, feeling I knew what was coming. I was not mistaken.
“The King has charged me with an assignment for you.”
That summer, over three months, I killed seventeen times for the King. Had I not already killed, out of my own volition and defense, it might have been harder.
The assignments might have seemed simple. Me, a horse, and panniers of poisoned bread. I rode roads where travelers had reported being attacked, and when the Forged ones attacked me, I fled, leaving a trail of spilled loaves. Perhaps if I had been an ordinary man-at-arms, I would have been less frightened. But all my life I had been accustomed to relying on my Wit to let me know when others were about. To me, it was tantamount to having to work without using my eyes. And I swiftly found out that not all Forged ones had been cobblers and weavers. The second little clan of them that I poisoned had several soldiers among them. I was fortunate that most of them were squabbling over loaves when I was dragged from my horse. I took a deep cut from a knife, and to this day I bear the scar on my left shoulder. They were strong and competent, and seemed to fight as a unit, perhaps because that was how they had been drilled, back when they were fully human. I would have died, except that I cried out to them that it was foolish to struggle with me while the others were eating all the bread. They dropped me, I struggled to my horse, and escaped.
The poisons were no crueler than they had to be, but to be effective even in the smallest dosage, we had to use harsh ones. The Forged ones did not die gently, but it was as swift a death as Chade could concoct. They snatched their deaths from me eagerly, and I did not have to witness their frothing convulsions, or even see their bodies by the road. When news of the fallen Forged ones reached Buckkeep, Chade’s tale that they had probably died from eating spoiled fish from spawning streams had already spread as a ubiquitous rumor. Relatives collected the bodies and gave them proper burial. I told myself they were probably relieved, and that the Forged ones had met a quicker end than if they had starved to death over winter. And so I became accustomed to killing, and had nearly a score of deaths to my credit before I had to meet the eyes of a man, and then kill him.
That one, too, was not so difficult as it might have been. He was a minor lordling, holding lands outside of Turlake. A story reached Buckkeep that he had, in a temper, struck the child of a servant, and left the girl a witling. That was sufficient to raise King Shrewd’s lip. The lordling had paid the full blood debt, and by accepting it, the servant had given up any form of the King’s justice. But some months later there came to court a cousin of the girl’s, and she petitioned for private audience with Shrewd.
I was sent to confirm her tale and saw how the girl was kept like a dog at the foot of the lordling’s chair, and more, how her belly had begun to swell with child. And so it was not too difficult, as he offered me wine in fine crystal and begged the latest news of the King’s court at Buckkeep, for me to find a time to lift his glass to the light and praise the quality of both vessel and wine. I left some days later, my errand completed, with the samples of paper I had promised Fedwren, and the conveyed wishes of the lordling for a good trip home. The lordling was indisposed that day. He died, in blood and madness and froth, a month or so later. The cousin took in both girl and child. To this day, I have no regrets, for the deed or for the choice of slow death for him.
And when I was not dealing death to Forged ones, I waited on my lord Prince Verity. I remember the first time I climbed all those stairs to his tower, balancing a tray as I went. I had expected a guard or sentry at the top. There was none. I tapped at the door, and receiving no answer, entered quietly. Verity was sitting in a chair by a window. A summer wind off the ocean blew into the room. It could have been a pleasant chamber, full of light and air on a stuffy summer day. Instead it seemed to me a cell. There was the chair by the window, and a small table next to it. In the corners and around the edges of the room the floor was dusty and littered with bits of old strewing reeds. And Verity, chin slumped to his chest as if dozing, except that to my sense
s the room thrummed with his effort. His hair was unkempt, his chin bewhiskered with a day’s growth. His clothing hung on him.
I pushed the door shut with my foot and took the tray to the table. I set it down and stood beside it, quietly waiting. And in a few minutes he came back from wherever he had been. He looked up at me with a ghost of his old smile, and then down at his tray. “What’s this?”
“Breakfast, sir. Everyone else ate hours ago, save yourself.”
“I ate, boy. Early this morning. Some awful fish soup. The cooks should be hanged for that. No one should face fish first thing in the morning.” He seemed uncertain, like some doddering gaffer trying to recall the days of his youth.
“That was yesterday, sir.” I uncovered the plates. Warm bread swirled with honey and raisins, cold meats, a dish of strawberries, and a small pot of cream for them. All were small portions, almost a child’s serving. I poured the steaming tea into a waiting mug. It was flavored heavily with ginger and peppermint, to cover the ground elfbark’s tang.
Verity glanced at it and then up to me. “Chade never relents, does he?” Spoken so casually, as if Chade’s name were mentioned every day about the keep.
“You need to eat, if you are to continue,” I said neutrally.
“I suppose,” he said wearily, and turned to the tray as if the artfully arranged food were yet another duty to attend. He ate with no relish for the food, and drank the tea in a manful draft, as a medicine, undeceived by ginger or mint. Halfway through the meal he paused with a sigh and gazed out the window for a bit. Then, seeming to come back again, he forced himself to consume each item completely. He pushed the tray aside and leaned back in the chair as if exhausted. I stared. I had prepared the tea myself. That much elfbark would have had Sooty leaping over the stall walls.
