Royal Assassin (UK) Read online

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  Copy­right © Robin Hobb 1996

  Cover il­lus­tra­tion © Jackie Mor­ris

  Robin Hobb as­serts the moral right to be iden­ti­fied as the au­thor of this work

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  Source ISBN: 9780006480105

  Ebook Edi­tion © SEPTEM­BER 2011 ISBN: 9780007383443

  Ver­sion: 2014-11-14

  Con­tents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copy­right

  Ded­ic­a­tion

  Map

  Pro­logue

  One: Silt­bay

  Two: The Home­com­ing

  Three: Re­new­ing Ties

  Four: Di­lem­mas

  Five: Gam­bit

  Six: Forged Ones

  Seven: En­coun­ters

  Eight: The Queen Awakes

  Nine: Guards and Bonds

  Ten: Fool’s Er­rand

  El­even: Lone Wolves

  Twelve: Tasks

  Thir­teen: Hunt­ing

  Four­teen: Win­ter­fest

  Fif­teen: Secrets

  Six­teen: Ver­ity’s Ships

  Sev­en­teen: In­ter­ludes

  Eight­een: Eld­er­lings

  Nine­teen: Mes­sages

  Twenty: Mis­haps

  Twenty-One: Dark Days

  Twenty-Two: Burrich

  Twenty-Three: Threats

  Twenty-Four: Neat­bay

  Twenty-Five: Buck­keep

  Twenty-Six: Skilling

  Twenty-Seven: Con­spir­acy

  Twenty-Eight: Treas­ons and Trait­ors

  Twenty-Nine: Es­capes and Cap­tures

  Thirty: Dun­geons

  Thirty-One: Tor­ture

  Thirty-Two: Ex­e­cu­tion

  Thirty-Three: Wolf Days

  Epi­logue

  Keep Read­ing

  About the Au­thor

  Also by the Au­thor

  About the Pub­lisher

  Map

  PRO­LOGUE

  Dreams and Awaken­ings

  Why is it for­bid­den to write down spe­cific know­ledge of the ma­gics? Per­haps be­cause we all fear that such know­ledge would fall into the hands of one not worthy to use it. Cer­tainly there has al­ways been a sys­tem of ap­pren­tice­ship to en­sure that the un­der­stand­ing of ma­gic is passed only to those trained and judged worthy of such know­ledge. While this seems a laud­able at­tempt to pro­tect us from un­worthy prac­ti­tion­ers of ar­cane lore, it ig­nores the fact that the ma­gics are not de­rived from this spe­cific know­ledge. The pre­dilec­tion for a cer­tain type of ma­gic is either in­born or lack­ing. For in­stance, the abil­ity for the ma­gics known as the Skill is tied closely to blood re­la­tion­ship to the royal Farseer line, though it may also oc­cur as a ‘wild strain’ amongst folk whose an­cest­ors came from both the In­land tribes and the Outis­landers. One trained in the Skill is able to reach out to an­other’s mind, no mat­ter how dis­tant, and know what he is think­ing. Those who are strongly Skilled can in­flu­ence that think­ing, or have con­verse with that per­son. For the con­duct­ing of a battle, or the gath­er­ing of in­form­a­tion, it is a most use­ful tool.

  Folk­lore tells of an even older ma­gic, much des­pised now, known as the Wit. Few will ad­mit a tal­ent for this ma­gic, hence it is al­ways said to be the province of the folk in the next val­ley, or the ones who live on the other side of the far ridge. I sus­pect it was once the nat­ural ma­gic of those who lived on the land as hunters rather than as settled folk; a ma­gic for those who felt kin­ship with the wild beasts of the woods. The Wit, it is said, gave one the abil­ity to speak the tongues of the beasts. It was also warned that those who prac­tised the Wit too long or too well be­came whatever beast they had bon­ded to. But this may be only le­gend.

  There are the Hedge ma­gics, though I have never been able to de­term­ine the source of this name, which are both veri­fied and sus­pect, in­clud­ing palm read­ing, wa­ter gaz­ing, the in­ter­pret­a­tion of crys­tal re­flec­tions, and a host of other skills that at­tempt to pre­dict the fu­ture. In a sep­ar­ate un­named cat­egory are the ma­gics that cause phys­ical ef­fects, such as in­vis­ib­il­ity, lev­it­a­tion, giv­ing mo­tion or life to in­an­im­ate ob­jects – all the ma­gics of the old le­gends, from the Fly­ing Chair of the Widow’s Son to the North Wind’s be­witched table­cloth. I know of no people who claim these ma­gics as their own. They seem to be solely the stuff of le­gend, ascribed to folk liv­ing in an­cient times or dis­tant places, or be­ings of myth­ical or near myth­ical repu­ta­tion: dragons, gi­ants, the Eld­er­lings, the Oth­ers, peck­sies.

  I pause to clean my pen. My writ­ing wanders from spidery to blob­bish on this poor pa­per. But I will not use good parch­ment for these words; not yet. I am not sure they should be writ­ten. I ask my­self, why put this to pa­per at all? Will not this know­ledge be passed down by word of mouth to those who are worthy? Per­haps. But per­haps not. What we take for gran­ted now, the know­ing of these things, may be a won­der and a mys­tery someday to our des­cend­ants.

  There is very little in any of the lib­rar­ies on ma­gic. I work la­bor­i­ously, tra­cing a thread of know­ledge through a patch­work quilt of in­form­a­tion. I find scattered ref­er­ences, passing al­lu­sions, but that is all. I have gathered it, over these last few years, and stored it in my head, al­ways in­tend­ing to com­mit my know­ledge to pa­per. I will put down what I know from my own ex­per­i­ence, as well as what I have fer­reted out. Per­haps to provide an­swers for some other poor fool, in times to come, who might find him­self as battered by the war­ring of the ma­gics within him as I have been.

  But when I sit down to the task, I hes­it­ate. Who am I to set my will against the wis­dom of those who have gone be­fore me? Shall I set down in plain let­ter­ing the meth­ods by which a Wit-gif­ted one can ex­pand his range, or can bond a creature to him­self? Shall I de­tail the train­ing one must un­dergo be­fore be­ing re­cog­nized as a Skilled one? The hedge wiz­ardries and le­gendary ma­gics have never been mine. Have I any right to dig out their secrets and pin them to pa­per like so many but­ter­flies or leaves col­lec­ted for study?

  I try to con­sider what one might do with such know­ledge, un­justly gained. It leads me to con­sider what this know­ledge has gained for me. Power, wealth, the love of a wo­man? I mock my­self. Neither the Skill nor the Wit has ever offered any such to me. Or if they did, I had not the sense nor am­bi­tion to seize them when offered.

  Power. I do not think I ever wanted it fo
r its own sake. I thirsted for it, some­times, when I was ground down, or when those close to me suffered be­neath ones who ab­used their powers. Wealth. I never really con­sidered it. From the mo­ment that I, his bas­tard grand­son, pledged my­self to King Shrewd, he al­ways saw to it that all my needs were ful­filled. I had plenty to eat, more edu­ca­tion than I some­times cared for, clothes both simple and an­noy­ingly fash­ion­able, and of­ten enough a coin or two of my own to spend. Grow­ing up in Buck­keep, that was wealth enough and more than most boys in Buck­keep Town could claim. Love? Well. My horse Sooty was fond of me, in her own pla­cid way. I had the true-hearted loy­alty of a hound named Nosy, and that took him to his grave. I was given the fiercest of loves by a ter­rier pup, and it was like­wise the death of him. I wince to think of the price will­ingly paid for lov­ing me.

  Al­ways I have pos­sessed the loneli­ness of one raised amidst in­trigues and clus­ter­ing secrets, the isol­a­tion of a boy who can not trust the com­plete­ness of his heart to any­one. I could not go to Fed­wren, the court scribe who praised me for my neat let­ter­ing and well-inked il­lus­tra­tions, and con­fide that I was already ap­pren­ticed to the Royal As­sas­sin, and thus could not fol­low his writ­ing trade. Nor could I di­vulge to Chade, my mas­ter in the dip­lomacy of the knife, the frus­trat­ing bru­tal­ity I en­dured try­ing to learn the ways of the Skill from Ga­len the Skill­mas­ter. And to no one did I dare speak openly of my emer­ging pro­cliv­ity for the Wit, the an­cient beast ma­gic, said to be a per­ver­sion and a taint to any who used it.

  Not even to Molly.

  Molly was that most cher­ished of items: a genu­ine refuge. She had ab­so­lutely noth­ing to do with my day to day life. It was not just that she was fe­male, though that was mys­tery enough to me. I was raised al­most en­tirely in the com­pany of men, bereft not only of my nat­ural mother and father, but of any blood re­la­tions who would openly ac­know­ledge me. As a child, my care was en­trus­ted to Burrich, the gruff Sta­ble­mas­ter who had once been my father’s right-hand man. The stable hands and the guards were my daily com­pan­ions. Then as now, there were wo­men in the guard com­pan­ies, though not so many then as now. But like their male com­rades, they had du­ties to per­form, and lives and fam­il­ies of their own when they were not on watch. I could not claim their time. I had no mother, nor sis­ters or aunts of my own. There were no wo­men who offered me the spe­cial ten­der­ness said to be the province of wo­men.

  None save Molly.

  She was but a year or two older than my­self, and grow­ing the same way a sprig of green­ery forces its way up through a gap in the cobble­stones. Neither her father’s near con­stant drunk­en­ness and fre­quent bru­tal­ity nor the grind­ing chores of a child try­ing to main­tain the pre­tence of both home and fam­ily busi­ness could crush her. When I first met her, she was as wild and wary as a fox cub. Molly Nosebleed she was called among the street chil­dren. She of­ten bore the marks of the beat­ings her father gave her. Des­pite his cruelty, she cared for him. I never un­der­stood that. He would grumble and be­rate her even as she tottered him home after one of his binges and put him to bed. And when he awoke, he never had any re­morse for his drunk­en­ness and harsh words. There were only more cri­ti­cisms: why hadn’t the chand­lery been swept and fresh strew­ing herbs put on the floor? Why hadn’t she ten­ded the bee hives, when they were nearly out of honey to sell? Why had she let the fire go out un­der the tal­low pot? I was mute wit­ness more times than I care to re­mem­ber.

  But through it all, Molly grew. She flowered, one sud­den sum­mer, into a young wo­man who left me in awe of her cap­able ways and wo­manly charms. For her part, she seemed totally un­aware of how her eyes could meet mine and turn my tongue to leather in my mouth. No ma­gic I pos­sessed, no Skill, no Wit, was proof against the ac­ci­dental touch of her hand against mine, nor could de­fend me against the awk­ward­ness that over­whelmed me at the quirk of her smile.

  Should I cata­logue her hair flow­ing with the wind, or de­tail how the col­our of her eyes shif­ted from dark am­ber to rich brown de­pend­ing on her mood and the hue of her gown? I would catch a glimpse of her scar­let skirts and red shawl amongst the mar­ket throng, and sud­denly be aware of no one else. These are ma­gics I wit­nessed, and though I might set them down on pa­per, no other could ever work them with such skill.

  How did I court her? With a boy’s clumsy gal­lantries, gap­ing after her like a sim­pleton watch­ing the whirl­ing discs of a jug­gler. She knew I loved her be­fore I did. And she let me court her, al­though I was a few years younger than she, and not one of the town boys and pos­sessed of small pro­spects as far as she knew. She thought I was the scribe’s er­rand boy, a part-time helper in the stables, a keep run­ner. She never sus­pec­ted I was the Bas­tard, the un­ac­know­ledged son who had toppled Prince Chiv­alry from his place in the line of suc­ces­sion. That alone was a big enough secret. Of my ma­gics and my other pro­fes­sion, she knew noth­ing.

  Maybe that was why I could love her.

  It was cer­tainly why I lost her.

  I let the secrets and fail­ures and pains of my other lives keep me too busy. There were ma­gics to learn, secrets to fer­ret out, men to kill, in­trigues to sur­vive. Sur­roun­ded by them, it never oc­curred to me that I could turn to Molly for a meas­ure of the hope and un­der­stand­ing that eluded me every­where else. She was apart from these things, un­sul­lied by them. I care­fully kept pre­served from her any touch of them. I never tried to draw her into my world. In­stead, I went to hers, to the fish­ing and ship­ping port town where she sold candles and honey in her shop, and shopped in the mar­ket and, some­times, walked on the beaches with me. To me, it was enough that she ex­is­ted for me to love. I did not even dare to hope she might re­turn that feel­ing.

  There came a time when my train­ing in the Skill ground me into a misery so deep I did not think I could sur­vive it. I could not for­give my­self for be­ing un­able to learn it; I could not ima­gine that my fail­ure might not mat­ter to oth­ers. I cloaked my des­pair in surly with­drawal. I let the long weeks pass, and never saw her or even sent her word that I thought of her. Fi­nally, when there was no one else that I could turn to, I sought her. Too late. I ar­rived at the Bee­balm Chand­lery in Buck­keep Town one af­ter­noon, gifts in hand, in time to see her leav­ing. Not alone. With Jade, a fine broad-ches­ted sea­man, with a bold ear­ring in one ear and the sure mas­culin­ity of his su­per­ior years. Un­noticed, de­feated, I slunk away and watched them walk off arm in arm. I let her go, and in the months that fol­lowed, I tried to con­vince my­self that my heart had let her go as well. I won­der what would have happened if I had run after them that af­ter­noon, if I had begged one last word of her. Odd, to think of so many events turn­ing upon a boy’s mis­placed pride and his schooled ac­cept­ance of de­feats. I set her out of my thoughts, and spoke of her to no one. I got on with my life.

  King Shrewd sent me as his as­sas­sin with a great cara­van of folk go­ing to wit­ness the pledging of the Moun­tain prin­cess Kettricken as Prince Ver­ity’s bride. My mis­sion was quietly to cause the death of her older brother, Prince Rurisk, subtly of course, so that she would be left the sole heir to the Moun­tain throne. But what I found when I ar­rived there was a web of de­ceit and lies en­gin­eered by my young­est uncle, Prince Regal, who hoped to topple Ver­ity from the line of suc­ces­sion and claim the prin­cess as his own bride. I was the pawn he would sac­ri­fice for this goal; and I was the pawn who in­stead toppled the game pieces around him, bring­ing his wrath and ven­geance down on my­self, but sav­ing the crown and the prin­cess for Prince Ver­ity. I do not think this was hero­ism. Nor do I think it was petty spite wreaked on one who had al­ways bul­lied and be­littled me. It was the act of a boy be­com­ing a man, and do­ing what I had sworn to do years be­fore I knew the cost of such an oath. The price was my healthy
young body, so long taken for gran­ted.

  Long after I had de­feated Regal’s plot, I lingered in a sickbed in the Moun­tain King­dom. But fi­nally a morn­ing came when I awoke and be­lieved that my long ill­ness was fi­nally over. Burrich had de­cided I was re­covered enough to be­gin the long jour­ney back home to the Six Duch­ies. Prin­cess Kettricken and her en­tour­age had left for Buck­keep weeks be­fore, when the weather was still fine. Now winter snows already smothered the higher parts of the Moun­tain King­dom. If we did not leave Jhaampe soon, we would be forced to winter there. I was up early that morn­ing, do­ing my fi­nal pack­ing, when the first small tremors began. Res­ol­utely, I ig­nored them. I was just shaky, I told my­self, with not yet hav­ing eaten break­fast, and the ex­cite­ment of the jour­ney home. I donned the gar­ments that Jon­qui had fur­nished for our winter jour­ney through the Moun­tains and across the plains. For me there was a long red shirt, pad­ded with wool. The quilted trousers were green, but em­broidered with red at the waist and cuffs. The boots were sacks of soft leather, al­most shape­less un­til my feet were laced in­side them, pad­ded with sheared wool and trimmed with fur. They fastened to the feet with long wrap­pings of leather strips. My trem­bling fin­gers made ty­ing them a dif­fi­cult task. Jon­qui had told us they were won­der­ful for the dry snow of the moun­tains, but to be­ware of get­ting them wet. There was a look­ing glass in the room. At first, I smiled at my re­flec­tion. Not even King Shrewd’s Fool dressed as gaily as this. But above the bright gar­ments, my face was thin and pale, mak­ing my dark eyes too large, while my fever-shorn hair, black and bristly, stood up like a dog’s hackles. My ill­ness had rav­aged me. But I told my­self I was fi­nally on my way home. I turned aside from the mir­ror. As I packed the few small gifts I had se­lec­ted to take home to my friends, the un­stead­i­ness grew in my hands.

  For the last time, Burrich, Hands and I sat down to break fast with Jon­qui. I thanked her once again for all she had done to­wards heal­ing me. I picked up a spoon for the por­ridge, and my hand gave a twitch. I dropped it. I watched the sil­very shape fall and fell after it.