Assassin's Apprentice (The Illustrated Edition)

  The Farseer: Assassin’s Apprentice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Robin Hobb

  Foreword copyright © 2019 by Robin Hobb

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Penguin Random House LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in trade paperback and in slightly different form in the United States by Bantam Spectra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, in 1995.

  Hardback ISBN 9781984817853

  Ebook ISBN 9780553897487

  randomhousebooks.com

  25th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

  Illustrations and endpaper map by Magali Villeneuve

  Cover design and illustration © Paul Lycett

  Stag’s head based on an illustration © Jackie Morris

  Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

  v5.4

  ep

  Closing the Circle

  25TH ANNIVERSARY ILLUSTRATED EDITION of ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE

  Robin Hobb

  In May of 1995, Bantam Books published Assassin’s Apprentice, a fantasy novel ostensibly by a new writer: Robin Hobb. As I write this foreword, more than two decades have passed. Those two decades have seen a great deal of change in my life. When I wrote Assassin’s Apprentice, the soundtrack was a two-year-old who was obsessed with the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast in the living room, and teenagers playing D&D in the kitchen. Now my home is empty of children, except when the grandkids, the new wave of teenagers, come to visit. I wrote the first draft of Assassin’s Apprentice on my very first computer, a Kaypro, and my office was a corner of the laundry room. Now I have a custom desktop, a laptop, and a tablet to keep up with the work.

  The changes didn’t happen all at once. Over those twenty-five years, Robin Hobb has written more than a score of novels and short works. Fitz’s tale, which was to be just a trilogy, now runs to sixteen volumes. We have seen his story translated into more than twenty-two languages, reaching readers all over the world. The books have won awards and climbed bestseller lists. There are still days when Megan Lindholm sits back and is a bit stunned by that.

  But as wonderful as those things are, the reactions of individual readers are far more significant to me. Fitz and the Fool have ardent followers. Not only emails arrive from readers, but real letters and cards, hand-addressed, bearing stamps from every country. It is humbling to read those notes, or to have a brief but meaningful conversation at a signing; a reader closes the circle and tells me that the characters and stories that I sent out reached them in a special way.

  I have spoken to other writers about this phenomenon. When it finds you (whatever we call “it”—the Muse, inspiration, Story), writing moves past the careful construction of a plot line and the adding-in of needed characters. Story overflows outline and cuts its own passage through the valley of fiction. For the writer, it’s an immersion. I don’t remember writing scenes and chapters; I recall a conversation on a snowy tower top with Fitz, or the warmth and sounds of a stable lit by lantern light. I’ve smelled the fragrances of the Women’s Garden, and heard the mocking lilt of the Fool’s laughter.

  Sometimes, that same immersion engulfs the reader.

  When I converse with those readers, we don’t discuss words on a page. We reminisce about people we know, and the adventures we shared with them. The characters (not just Fitz and the Fool, but all of them, Chade and Burrich and Molly and Regal) became real. We’ve seen their faces and heard their distinct voices. Readers have hiked the windy cliffs near Buckkeep, shivered in the perpetual chill of Shrewd’s great hall, and dodged cobwebs in the labyrinth of spy passages in those stone walls.

  Their affection for the characters and stories spill over into their real lives. I have received photos of dogs, cats, parrots, and even children named after the characters. I’ve seen wonderful cosplay of the characters from places as far away as Taiwan and Australia. My walls are now overwhelmed with fan art as readers apply their own layer of creativity to make the story theirs.

  And I understand what those things mean. They are about connection, about closing the circle of writer, characters, and readers. I understand because I’ve been the reader sending that letter or small gift to a writer I’ve never met. I sent them because I wanted that writer to know that I’d met their characters. Their characters had become my friends. I hadn’t read a story; I’d shared a life.

  Many, many years ago, before the beginning of my writing career, I wrote an ardent letter to Fritz Leiber. He was one of my writing heroes, but he’d written a story in which one of his characters experienced a grave change in his life and abilities. It was a character he’d written many previous stories about, and I was distressed. How could he do that to a character he obviously loved? I didn’t understand.

  Mr. Leiber took the time to send me back a letter, handwritten in what looked like crabbed and painful penmanship. He explained to me that characters had to be challenged. They had to grow and change. He told me that if the happy ending of the tale was just a return to how things had been at the beginning, well, what was the point of writing that story at all?

  That was a truth I needed to hear. I looked at my previous stories and realized that in all of them, I’d been protecting my characters. Things might happen to them, but those things were not absolutely terrible nor life-changing. I went back to work on a story I’d started. I finally allowed life to happen to some of my characters. And that was the first book I ever sold: Harpy’s Flight by Megan Lindholm. Mr. Leiber had closed the circle between writer, story, and reader. In doing so, he’d given me what I needed to write stories of my own that, in turn, might reach other readers.

  I hope that my readers have shared that same feeling as they followed Fitz and all the events in the Realm of the Elderlings. In twenty-five years, Fitz went from a bewildered five-year-old to a skilled assassin to a weathered man in his sixties. Friends and companions came and went in his life. He had times of hardship and loneliness, and times of peace and contentment. Book after book, the readers and I accompanied him. We sustained losses and shared moments of recognition and joy. Then, in 2017, with the publication of Assassin’s Fate, the tale wound to a close. Readers have asked me how it felt to write that final page. Inevitable is one word for it. From the time I began writing Assassin’s Apprentice to the moment that last page of the final draft of Assassin’s Fate came rattling out of my printer, I knew where the story must eventually lead. Story has a current of its own. It can’t be defied forever.

  If you are new to the Realm of the Elderlings, welcome. If this is not your first journey, I thank you for venturing again into Fitz’s world. Either way, I hope you enjoy this very special edition. I was thrilled when Magali Villeneuve agreed to do the illustrations for this book. In a strange way, Fitz introduced me to her, for it was on a visit to France for a book tour that I first saw her art in an exhibition and was able to speak with her. I treasure a pencil sketch of FitzChivalry that she sent me as a gift with a copy of her A Journey Through Illustrations, published in 2015. I have #1 of the 500 copies! I’ve treasured it for years, never imagin
ing that someday she would fill an edition of Assassin’s Apprentice with images of not only Fitz, but Burrich and Molly and Chade and so many of my other characters, all brought to life with her talent.

  But most of all, I thank you for offering my characters a home in your heart.

  Chapter

  1

  The Earliest History

  A history of the Six Duchies is of necessity a history of its ruling family, the Farseers. A complete telling would reach back beyond the founding of the First Duchy and, if such names were remembered, would tell us of Outislanders raiding from the sea, visiting as pirates a shore more temperate and gentler than the icy beaches of the Out Islands. But we do not know the names of these earliest forebears.

  And of the first real King, little more than his name and some extravagant legends remain. Taker his name was, quite simply, and perhaps with that naming began the tradition that daughters and sons of his lineage would be given names that would shape their lives and beings. Folk beliefs claim that such names were sealed to the newborn babes by magic, and that these royal offspring were incapable of betraying the virtues whose names they bore. Passed through fire and plunged through salt water and offered to the winds of the air; thus were names sealed to these chosen children. So we are told. A pretty fancy, and perhaps once there was such a ritual, but history shows us this was not always sufficient to bind a child to the virtue that named it….

  * * *

  My pen falters, then falls from my knuckly grip, leaving a worm’s trail of ink across Fedwren’s paper. I have spoiled another leaf of the fine stuff, in what I suspect is a futile endeavor. I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.

  Both Fedwren and Patience were so filled with enthusiasm whenever a written account of the history of the Six Duchies was discussed that I persuaded myself the writing of it was a worthwhile effort. I convinced myself that the exercise would turn my thoughts aside from my pain and help the time to pass. But each historical event I consider only awakens my own personal shades of loneliness and loss. I fear I will have to set this work aside entirely, or else give in to reconsidering all that has shaped what I have become. And so I begin again, and again, but always find that I am writing of my own beginnings rather than the beginnings of this land. I do not even know to whom I try to explain myself. My life has been a web of secrets, secrets that even now are unsafe to share. Shall I set them all down on fine paper, only to create from them flame and ash? Perhaps.

  My memories reach back to when I was six years old. Before that, there is nothing, only a blank gulf no exercise of my mind has ever been able to pierce. Prior to that day at Moonseye, there is nothing. But on that day they suddenly begin, with a brightness and detail that overwhelms me. Sometimes it seems too complete, and I wonder if it is truly mine. Am I recalling it from my own mind, or from dozens of retellings by legions of kitchen maids and ranks of scullions and herds of stable boys as they explained my presence to each other? Perhaps I have heard the story so many times, from so many sources, that I now recall it as an actual memory of my own. Is the detail the result of a six-year-old’s open absorption of all that goes on around him? Or could the completeness of the memory be the bright overlay of the Skill, and the later drugs a man takes to control his addiction to it, the drugs that bring on pains and cravings of their own? The last is most possible. Perhaps it is even probable. One hopes it is not the case.

  The remembrance is almost physical: the chill grayness of the fading day, the remorseless rain that soaked me, the icy cobbles of the strange town’s streets, even the callused roughness of the huge hand that gripped my small one. Sometimes I wonder about that grip. The hand was hard and rough, trapping mine within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held mine. Only firm. It did not let me slip on the icy streets, but it did not let me escape my fate, either. It was as implacable as the icy gray rain that glazed the trampled snow and ice of the graveled pathway outside the huge wooden doors of the fortified building that stood like a fortress within the town itself.

  The doors were tall, not just to a six-year-old boy, but tall enough to admit giants, to dwarf even the rangy old man who towered over me. And they looked strange to me, although I cannot summon up what type of door or dwelling would have looked familiar. Only that these, carved and bound with black iron hinges, decorated with a buck’s head and knocker of gleaming brass, were outside of my experience. I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and legs were wet and cold. And yet, again, I cannot recall that I had walked far through winter’s last curses, nor that I had been carried. No, it all starts there, right outside the doors of the stronghouse, with my small hand trapped inside the tall man’s.

  Almost, it is like a puppet show beginning. Yes, I can see it thus. The curtains parted, and there we stood before that great door. The old man lifted the brass knocker and banged it down, once, twice, thrice on the plate that resounded to his pounding. And then, from offstage, a voice sounded. Not from within the doors, but from behind us, back the way we had come. “Father, please,” the woman’s voice begged. I turned to look at her, but it had begun to snow again, a lacy veil that clung to eyelashes and coat sleeves. I can’t recall that I saw anyone. Certainly, I did not struggle to break free of the old man’s grip on my hand, nor did I call out, “Mother, Mother.” Instead I stood, a spectator, and heard the sound of boots within the keep, and the unfastening of the door hasp within.

  One last time she called. I can still hear the words perfectly, the desperation in a voice that now would sound young to my ears. “Father, please, I beg you!” A tremor shook the hand that gripped mine, but whether of anger or some other emotion, I shall never know. As swift as a black crow seizes a bit of dropped bread, the old man stooped and snatched up a frozen chunk of dirty ice. Wordlessly he flung it, with great force and fury, and I cowered where I stood. I do not recall a cry, nor the sound of struck flesh. What I do remember is how the doors swung outward, so that the old man had to step hastily back, dragging me with him.

  And there is this. The man who opened the door was no house servant, as I might imagine if I had only heard this story. No, memory shows me a man-at-arms, a warrior, gone a bit to gray and with a belly more of hard suet than muscle, but not some mannered house servant. He looked both the old man and me up and down with a soldier’s practiced suspicion, and then stood there silently, waiting for us to state our business.

  I think it rattled the old man a bit, and stimulated him, not to fear, but to anger. For he suddenly dropped my hand and instead gripped me by the back of my coat and swung me forward, like a whelp offered to a prospective new owner. “I’ve brought the boy to you,” he said in a rusty voice.

  And when the house guard continued to stare at him, without judgment or even curiosity, he elaborated. “I’ve fed him at my table for six years, and never a word from his father, never a coin, never a visit, though my daughter gives me to understand he knows he fathered a bastard on her. I’ll not feed him any longer, nor break my back at a plow to keep clothes on his back. Let him be fed by him what got him. I’ve enough to tend to of my own, what with my woman getting on in years, and this one’s mother to keep and feed. For not a man will have her now, not a man, not with this pup running at her heels. So you take him, and give him to his father.” And he let go of me so suddenly that I sprawled to the stone doorstep at the guard’s feet. I scrabbled to a sitting position, not much hurt that I recall, and looked up to see what would happen next between the two men.

  The guard looked down at me, lips pursed slightly, not in judgment but merely considering how to classify me. “Whose get?” he asked, and his tone was not one of curiosity, but only that of a
man who asks for more specific information on a situation, in order to report well to a superior.

  “Chivalry’s,” the old man said, and he was already turning his back on me, taking his measured steps down the graveled pathway. “Prince Chivalry,” he said, not turning back as he added the qualifier. “Him what’s King-in-Waiting. That’s who got him. So let him do for him, and be glad he managed to father one child, somewhere.”

  For a moment the guard watched the old man walking away. Then he wordlessly stooped to seize me by the collar and drag me out of the way so he could close the door. He let go of me for the brief time it took him to secure the door. That done, he stood looking down on me. No real surprise, only a soldier’s stoic acceptance of the odder bits of his duty. “Up, boy, and walk,” he said.

  So I followed him, down a dim corridor, past rooms spartanly furnished, with windows still shuttered against winter’s chill, and finally to another set of closed doors, these of rich, mellow wood embellished with carvings. There he paused and straightened his own garments briefly. I remember quite clearly how he went down on one knee to tug my shirt straight and smooth my hair with a rough pat or two, but whether this was from some kindhearted impulse that I make a good impression, or merely a concern that his package look well tended, I will never know. He stood again and knocked once at the double doors. Having knocked, he did not wait for a reply, or at least I never heard one. He pushed the doors open, herded me in before him, and shut the doors behind him.

  This room was as warm as the corridor had been chill, and alive as the other chambers had been deserted. I recall a quantity of furniture in it, rugs and hangings, and shelves of tablets and scrolls overlaid with the scattering of clutter that any well-used and comfortable chamber takes on. There was a fire burning in a massive fireplace, filling the room with heat and a pleasantly resinous scent. An immense table was placed at an angle to the fire, and behind it sat a stocky man, his brows knit as he bent over a sheaf of papers in front of him. He did not look up immediately, and so I was able to study his rather bushy disarray of dark hair for some moments.