Assassin's Quest (UK) Read online

  As­sas­sin’s Quest

  Book Three of The Farseer Tri­logy

  Robin Hobb

  Copy­right

  HarperVoy­ager

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  Copy­right © Robin Hobb 1997

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

  Cover lay­out design © Har­per­Col­lin­sPub­lish­ers Ltd 2014.

  Il­lus­tra­tion © Jackie Mor­ris.

  Cal­li­graphy by Stephen Raw.

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  Har­per­CollinsPub­lish­ers has made every reas­on­able ef­fort to en­sure that any pic­ture con­tent and writ­ten con­tent in this ebook has been in­cluded or re­moved in ac­cord­ance with the con­trac­tual and tech­no­lo­gical con­straints in op­er­a­tion at the time of pub­lic­a­tion.

  Source ISBN: 9780006480112

  Ebook Edi­tion © SEPTEM­BER 2011 ISBN: 9780007370443

  Ver­sion 2014-10-02

  DED­IC­A­TION

  For the very real Kat Og­den

  Who threatened, at an early age, to grow up and be

  a tap dan­cing,

  fen­cing,

  judoka,

  movie-star,

  ar­chae­olo­gist,

  and

  Pres­id­ent of the United States.

  And is get­ting fright­en­ingly close to the end of her list.

  Never mis­take the movie for the book.

  CON­TENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copy­right

  Ded­ic­a­tion

  Map

  Pro­logue: The Un­re­membered

  One: Grave­birth

  Two: The Part­ing

  Three: The Quest

  Four: The River Road

  Five: Con­front­a­tions

  Six: The Wit and the Skill

  Seven: Far­row

  Eight: Trade­ford

  Nine: As­sas­sin

  Ten: Hir­ing Fair

  El­even: Shep­herd

  Twelve: Sus­pi­cions

  Thir­teen: Blue Lake

  Four­teen: Smug­glers

  Fif­teen: Kettle

  Six­teen: Bolthole

  Sev­en­teen: River Cross­ing

  Eight­een: Moon­seye

  Nine­teen: Pur­suit

  Twenty: Jhaampe

  Twenty-One: Con­front­a­tions

  Twenty-Two: De­par­ture

  Twenty-Three: The Moun­tains

  Twenty-Four: The Skill Road

  Twenty-Five: Strategy

  Twenty-Six: Sign­posts

  Twenty-Seven: The City

  Twenty-Eight: The Co­terie

  Twenty-Nine: The Rooster Crown

  Thirty: Stone Garden

  Thirty-One: Elf­bark

  Thirty-Two: Cape­lin Beach

  Thirty-Three: The Quarry

  Thirty-Four: Girl on a Dragon

  Thirty-Five: Kettle’s Secrets

  Thirty-Six: The Wit and the Sword

  Thirty-Seven: Feed­ing the Dragon

  Thirty-Eight: Ver­ity’s Bar­gain

  Thirty-Nine: Ver­ity’s Dragon

  Forty: Regal

  Forty-One: The Scribe

  Keep Read­ing

  About the Au­thor

  Also by the Au­thor

  About the Pub­lisher

  MAP

  PRO­LOGUE

  The Un­re­membered

  I awake every morn­ing with ink on my hands. Some­times I am sprawled, face down, on my work table, amidst a wel­ter of scrolls and pa­pers. My boy, when he comes in with my tray, may dare to chide me for not tak­ing my­self off to bed the night be­fore. But some­times he looks at my face and ven­tures no word. I do not try to ex­plain to him why I do as I do. It is not a secret one can give to a younger man; it is one he must earn and learn on his own.

  A man has to have a pur­pose in life. I know this now, but it took me the first score years of my life to learn it. In that I scarcely think my­self unique. Still, it is a les­son that, once learned, has re­mained with me. So, with little be­sides pain to oc­cupy my­self these days, I have sought out a pur­pose for my­self. I have turned to a task that both Lady Pa­tience and Scribe Fed­wren had long ago ad­voc­ated. I began these pages as an ef­fort to write down a co­her­ent his­tory of the Six Duch­ies. But I found it dif­fi­cult to keep my mind long fixed on a single topic, and so I dis­tract my­self with lesser treat­ises, on my the­or­ies of ma­gic, on my ob­ser­va­tions of polit­ical struc­tures, and my re­flec­tions on other cul­tures. When the dis­com­fort is at its worst and I can­not sort my own thoughts well enough to write them down, I work on trans­la­tions, or at­tempt to make a legible re­cord­ing of older doc­u­ments. I busy my hands in the hope of dis­tract­ing my mind.

  My writ­ing serves me as Ver­ity’s map mak­ing once served him. The de­tail of the work and the con­cen­tra­tion re­quired is al­most enough to make one for­get both the long­ings of the ad­dic­tion, and the re­sid­ual pains of hav­ing once in­dulged it. One can be­come lost in such work, and for­get one­self. Or one can go even deeper, and find many re­col­lec­tions of that self. All too of­ten, I find I have wandered far from a his­tory of the duch­ies into a his­tory of FitzChiv­alry. Those re­col­lec­tions leave me face to face with who I once was, and who I have be­come.

  When one is deeply ab­sorbed in such a re­count­ing, it is sur­pris­ing how much de­tail one can re­call. Not all the memor­ies I sum­mon up are pain­ful. I have had more than a just share of good friends, and found them more loyal than I had any right to ex­pect. I have known beau­ties and joys that tried my heart’s strength as surely as the tra­gedies and ugli­nesses have. Yet I pos­sess, per­haps, a greater share of dark memor­ies than most men; few men have known death in a dun­geon, or can re­call the in­side of a coffin bur­ied be­neath the snow. The mind shies away from the de­tails of such things. It is one thing to re­call that Regal killed me. It is an­other to fo­cus on the de­tails of the days and nights en­dured as he starved me and then had me beaten to death. When I do, there are mo­ments that still can turn my bowels to ice, even after all these years. I can re­call the eyes of the man and the sound of his fist break­ing my nose. There still ex­ists for me a place I visit in my dreams, where I fight to re­main stand­ing, try­ing not to let my­self think of how I will make a fi­nal ef­fort to kill Regal. I re­call the blow from him that split my swollen skin and left the scar down my face that I still bear.

  I have never for­given my­self the tri­umph I ceded to him when I took poison and died.

  But more pain­ful than the events I can re­call are those that are lost to me. When Regal killed me, I died. I was never again com­monly known as FitzChiv­alry, I never re­newed bonds to the Buck­keep folk who had known me since I was a child of six. I never lived in Buck­keep
Castle again, never more waited on the Lady Pa­tience, never sat on the hearth­stones at Chade’s feet again. Lost to me were the rhythms of lives that had in­ter­twined with mine. Friends died, oth­ers were wed, babes were born, chil­dren came of age, and I saw none of it. Though I no longer pos­sess the body of a healthy young man, many still live who once called me friend. Some­times, still, I long to rest eyes on them, to touch hands, to lay to peace the loneli­ness of years.

  I can­not.

  Those years are lost to me, and all the years of their lives to come. Lost too, is that period, no longer than a month, but seem­ing much longer, when I was con­fined to dun­geon and then coffin. My king had died in my arms yet I did not see him bur­ied. Nor was I present at the coun­cil after my death when I was found guilty of hav­ing used the Wit ma­gic, and hence de­serving of the death that had been dealt me.

  Pa­tience came to lay claim to my body. My father’s wife, once so dis­tressed to dis­cover he had sired a bas­tard be­fore they were wed, was the one who took me from that cell. Hers the hands that washed my body for burial, that straightened my limbs and wrapped me in a grave cloth. Awk­ward, ec­cent­ric Lady Pa­tience, for whatever reason, cleansed my wounds and bound them as care­fully as if I still lived. She alone ordered the dig­ging of my grave and saw to the bury­ing of my coffin. She and Lacey, her wo­man, mourned me, when all oth­ers, out of fear or dis­gust at my crime, aban­doned me.

  Yet she knew noth­ing of how Burrich and Chade, my as­sas­sin mentor, came nights later to that grave, and dug away the snow that had fallen and the frozen clumps of earth that had been tossed down on my coffin. Only those two were present as Burrich broke through the lid of the coffin and tugged out my body, and then summoned, by his own Wit ma­gic, the wolf that had been en­trus­ted with my soul. They wres­ted that soul from the wolf and sealed it back into the battered body it had fled. They raised me, to walk once more in a man’s shape, to re­call what it was to have a king and be bound by an oath. To this day, I do not know if I thank them for that. Per­haps, as the Fool in­sists, they had no choice. Per­haps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only re­cog­ni­tion of the forces that brought us and bound us to our in­ev­it­able fates.

  ONE

  Grave­birth

  In the Chalced States, slaves are kept. They sup­ply the drudge la­bour. They are the miners, the bel­lows work­ers, the gal­ley row­ers, the crews for the of­fal wag­ons, the field work­ers, and the whores. Oddly, slaves are also the nurse­maids and chil­dren’s tu­tors and cooks and scribers and skilled crafts­folk. All of Chalced’s gleam­ing civil­iz­a­tion, from the great lib­rar­ies of Jep to the fabled foun­tains and baths at Sin­jon’s, are foun­ded on the ex­ist­ence of a slave class.

  The Bing­town Traders are the ma­jor source of the slave sup­ply. At one time, most slaves were cap­tives taken in war, and Chalced still of­fi­cially claims this is true. In more re­cent years there have not been suf­fi­cient wars to keep up with the de­mand for edu­cated slaves. The Bing­town Traders are very re­source­ful in find­ing other sources, and the rampant pir­acy in the Trade Is­lands is of­ten men­tioned in as­so­ci­ation with this. Those who are slave own­ers in Chalced show little curi­os­ity about where the slaves come from, so long as they are healthy.

  Slavery is a cus­tom that has never taken root in the Six Duch­ies. A man con­victed of a crime may be re­quired to serve the one he has in­jured, but a limit of time is al­ways placed, and he is never seen as less than a man mak­ing atone­ment. If a crime is too hein­ous to be re­deemed by la­bour, then the crim­inal pays with his death. No one ever be­comes a slave in the Six Duch­ies, nor do our laws sup­port the idea that a house­hold may bring slaves into the king­dom and have them re­main so. For this reason, many Chalced slaves who do win free of their own­ers by one path or an­other of­ten seek the Six Duch­ies as a new home.

  These slaves bring with them the far-flung tra­di­tions and folk­lore of their own lands. One such tale I have pre­served has to do with a girl who was Vecci, or what we would call Wit­ted. She wished to leave her par­ents’ home, to fol­low a man she loved and be his wife. Her par­ents did not find him worthy and denied her per­mis­sion. When they would not let her go, she was too du­ti­ful a child to dis­obey them. But she was also too ar­dent a wo­man to live without her true love. She lay down on her bed and died of sor­row. Her par­ents bur­ied her with great mourn­ing and much self-re­proach that they had not al­lowed her to fol­low her heart. But un­be­knownst to them, she was Wit-bon­ded to a she-bear. And when the girl died, the she-bear took her spirit into her keep­ing, so it might not flee the world. Three nights after the girl had been bur­ied, the she-bear dug up the grave, and re­stored the girl’s spirit to her body. The girl’s grave­birth made her a new per­son, no longer ow­ing duty to her par­ents. So she left the shattered coffin and went seek­ing her one true love. The tale has a sad end­ing, for hav­ing been a she-bear for a time, she was never wholly hu­man again, and her true love would not have her.

  This scrap of a tale was the basis for Burrich’s de­cision to try to free me from Prince Regal’s dun­geon by pois­on­ing me.

  The room was too hot. And too small. Pant­ing no longer cooled me. I got up from the table and went to the wa­ter bar­rel in the corner. I took the cover off it and drank deeply. Heart of the Pack looked up with an al­most snarl. ‘Use a cup, Fitz.’

  Wa­ter ran from my chin. I looked up at him stead­ily, watch­ing him.

  ‘Wipe your face.’ Heart of the Pack looked away from me, back to his own hands. He had grease on them and was rub­bing it into some straps. I snuffed it. I licked my lips.

  ‘I am hungry,’ I told him.

  ‘Sit down and fin­ish your work. Then we will eat.’

  I tried to re­mem­ber what he wanted of me. He moved his hand to­ward the table and I re­called. More leather straps at my end of the table. I went back and sat in the hard chair.

  ‘I am hungry now,’ I ex­plained to him. He looked at me again in the way that did not show his teeth but was still a snarl. Heart of the Pack could snarl with his eyes. I sighed. The grease he was us­ing smelled very good. I swal­lowed. Then I looked down. Leather straps and bits of metal were on the table be­fore me. I looked at them for a while. After a time, Heart of the Pack set down his straps and wiped his hands on a cloth. He came to stand be­side me, and I had to turn to be able to see him. ‘Here,’ he said, touch­ing the leather be­fore me. ‘You were mend­ing it here.’ He stood over me un­til I picked it up again. I bent to sniff it and he struck my shoulder. ‘Don’t do that!’

  My lip twitched, but I did not snarl. Snarling at him made him very, very angry. For a time I held the straps. Then it seemed as if my hands re­membered be­fore my mind did. I watched my fin­gers work the leather. When it was done, I held it up be­fore him and tugged it, hard, to show that it would hold even if the horse threw its head back. ‘But there isn’t a horse,’ I re­membered out loud. ‘All the horses are gone.’

  Brother?

  I come. I rose from my chair. I went to the door.

  ‘Come back and sit down,’ Heart of the Pack said.

  Nighteyes waits, I told him. Then I re­membered he could not hear me. I thought he could if he would try, but he would not try. I knew that if I spoke to him that way again, he would push me. He would not let me speak to Nighteyes that way much. He would even push Nighteyes if the wolf spoke too much to me. It seemed a very strange thing. ‘Nighteyes waits,’ I told him with my mouth.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It is a good time to hunt, now.’

  ‘It is a bet­ter time for you to stay in. I have food here for you.’

  ‘Nighteyes and I could find fresh meat.’ My mouth ran at the thought of it. A rab­bit torn open, still steam­ing in the winter night. That was what I wanted.

  ‘Nighteyes will have to hunt alone this night,’ Heart of the Pack told me. He w
ent to the win­dow and opened the shut­ters a little. The chill air rushed in. I could smell Nighteyes and fur­ther away, a snow cat. Nighteyes whined. ‘Go away,’ Heart of the Pack told him. ‘Go on, now, go hunt, go feed your­self. I’ve not enough to feed you here.’

  Nighteyes went away from the light that spilled from the win­dow. But he did not go too far. He was wait­ing out there for me, but I knew he could not wait long. Like me, he was hungry now.

  Heart of the Pack went to the fire that made the room too hot. There was a pot by it, and he poked it away from the fire and took the lid off. Steam came out, and with it smells. Grains and roots, and a tiny bit of meat smell, al­most boiled away. But I was so hungry I snuffed after it. I star­ted to whine, but Heart of the Pack made the eye-snarl again. So I went back to the hard chair. I sat. I waited.

  He took a very long time. He took all the leather from the table and put it on a hook. Then he put the pot of grease away. Then he brought the hot pot to the table. Then he set out two bowls and two cups. He put wa­ter in the cups. He set out a knife and two spoons. From the cup­board he brought bread and a small pot of jam. He put the stew in the bowl be­fore me, but I knew I could not touch it. I had to sit and not eat the food while he cut the bread and gave me a piece. I could hold the bread, but I could not eat it un­til he sat down too, with his plate and his stew and his bread.

  ‘Pick up your spoon,’ he re­minded me. Then he slowly sat down in his chair right be­side me. I was hold­ing the spoon and the bread and wait­ing, wait­ing, wait­ing. I didn’t take my eyes off him but I could not keep my mouth from mov­ing. It made him angry. I shut my mouth again. Fi­nally he said, ‘We will eat now.’

  But the wait­ing still had not stopped. One bite I was al­lowed to take. It must be chewed and swal­lowed be­fore I took more, or he would cuff me. I could take only as much stew as would fit on the spoon. I picked up the cup and drank from it. He smiled at me. ‘Good, Fitz. Good boy.’