Assassins apprentice uk, p.56
Assassin's Apprentice (UK), page 56
After a moment, I ventured, ‘I dreamed of you. While I was gone.’
She still didn’t speak. I felt a bit braver. ‘I dreamed you were at Siltbay. When it was raided.’ My words came out tight with my effort to keep my voice from shaking. ‘I dreamed of fires, and Raiders attacking. In my dream, there were two children you had to protect. It seemed as if they were yours.’ Her silence held like a wall against my words. She probably thought I was ten kinds of an idiot, babbling about dreams. And why, oh why, of all the people in the world who could have seen me so unmanned, why did it have to be Molly? The silence had grown long. ‘But you were here, at Buckkeep and safe.’ I tried to steady my quavering voice. ‘I’m glad you’re safe. But what are you doing at Buckkeep?’
‘What am I doing here?’ Her voice was as tight as mine. Anger made it cold, but I thought it was hedged with fear, too. ‘I came looking for a friend.’ She paused and seemed to struggle for a bit. When she spoke again, her voice was artificially calm, almost kind. ‘You see, my father died and left me a debtor. So my creditors took my shop from me. I went to stay with relatives, to help with the harvest, to earn money to start again. In Siltbay. Though how you came to know of it, I cannot even guess. I earned a bit and my cousin was willing to loan me the rest. The harvest had been good. I was to come back to Buckkeep the next day. But Siltbay was raided. I was there, with my nieces …’ Briefly, her voice trailed away. I remembered with her. The ships, the fire, the laughing woman with the sword. I looked up at her and could almost focus on her. I could not speak. But she was looking off, over my head. She spoke on calmly.
‘My cousins lost everything they owned. They counted themselves lucky, for their children survived. I couldn’t ask them to loan me money still. Truth was, they couldn’t even have paid me for the work I had done, if I had thought to ask. So I came back to Buckkeep, with winter closing in, and no place to stay. And I thought, I’ve always been friends with Newboy. If there’s anyone I could ask to loan me money to tide me over, it would be him. So I came up to the keep, and asked for the Scriber’s boy. But everyone shrugged and sent me to Fedwren. And Fedwren listened as I described you, and frowned, and sent me to Patience.’ Molly paused significantly. I tried to imagine that meeting, but shuddered away from it. ‘She took me on as a lady’s maid,’ Molly said softly. ‘She said it was the least she could do, after you had shamed me.’
‘Shamed you?’ I jerked upright. The world rocked around me and my blurry vision dissolved into sparks. ‘How? How shamed you?’
Molly’s voice was quiet. ‘She said you had obviously won my affections, and then left me. Under my false assumption that you would someday be able to marry me, I’d let you court me.’
‘I didn’t …’ I faltered, and then: ‘We were friends. I didn’t know you felt any more than that …’
‘You didn’t?’ She lifted her chin; I knew that gesture. Six years ago, she would have followed it with a punch to my stomach. I still flinched. But she just spoke more quietly when she said, ‘I suppose I should have expected you to say that. It’s an easy thing to say.’
It was my turn to be nettled. ‘You’re the one who left me, with not even a word of farewell. And with that sailor, Jade. Do you think I don’t know about him? I was there, Molly. I saw you take his arm and walk away with him. Why didn’t you come to me, then, before leaving with him?’
She drew herself up. ‘I had been a woman with prospects. Then I became, all unwittingly, a debtor. Do you imagine that I knew of the debts my father had incurred, and then ignored? Not till after he was buried did the creditors come knocking. I lost everything. Should I have come to you as a beggar, hoping you’d take me in? I’d thought that you’d cared about me. I believed that you wanted … El damn you, why do I have to admit this to you!’ Her words rattled against me like flung stones. I knew her eyes were blazing, her cheeks flushed. ‘I thought you did want to marry me, that you did want a future with me. I wanted to bring something to it, not come to you penniless and prospectless. I’d imagined us with a little shop, me with my candles and herbs and honey, and you with your scriber’s skills … And so I went to my cousin, to ask to borrow money. He had none to spare, but arranged for my passage to Siltbay, to talk to his elder brother Flint. I’ve told you how that ended. I worked my way back here on a fishing boat, Newboy, gutting fish and putting them down in salt. I came back to Buckkeep like a beaten dog. And I swallowed my pride and came up here that day, and found out how stupid I was, how you’d pretended and lied to me. You are a bastard, Newboy. You are.’
For a moment, I listened to an odd sound, trying to comprehend what it was. Then I knew. She was crying, in little catches of her breath. I knew if I tried to stand and go to her, I’d fall on my face. Or I’d reach her, and she’d knock me flat. So stupidly as any drunk, I repeated, ‘Well, what about Jade then? Why did you find it so easy to go to him? Why didn’t you come to me first?’
‘I told you! He’s my cousin, you moron!’ Her anger flared past her tears. ‘When you’re in trouble, you turn to your family. I asked him for help, and he took me to his family’s farm, to help out with the harvest.’ A moment of silence. Then, incredulously, ‘What did you think? That I was the type of woman who could have another man on the side?’ Icily. ‘That I would let you court me, and be seeing someone else?’
‘No. I didn’t say that.’
‘Of course you would.’ She said it as if it suddenly all made sense. ‘You’re like my father. He always believed I lied, because he told so many lies himself. Just like you. “Oh, I’m not drunk,” when you stink of it and you can barely stand. And your stupid story: “I dreamed of you at Siltbay.” Everyone in town knew I went to Siltbay. You probably heard the whole story tonight, while you were sitting in some tavern.’
‘No, I didn’t, Molly. You have to believe me.’ I clutched at the blankets on the bed to keep myself upright. She had turned her back on me.
‘No. I don’t! I don’t have to believe anyone any more.’ She paused, as if considering something. ‘You know, once, a long time ago, when I was a little girl. Before I even met you.’ Her voice was getting oddly calmer. Emptier, but calmer. ‘It was at Springfest. I remember when I’d asked my daddy for some pennies for the fair booths, he’d slapped me and said he wouldn’t waste money on foolish things like that. And then he’d kicked me in the shop and gone drinking. But even then I knew how to get out of the shop. I went to the fair booths anyway, just to see them. One was an old man telling fortunes with crystals. You know how they do. They hold the crystal to a candle’s light, and tell your future by how the colours fall across your face.’ She paused.
‘I know,’ I admitted to her silence. I knew the type of hedge wizard she meant. I’d seen the dance of coloured lights across a woman’s close-eyed face. Right now I only wished I could see Molly clearly. I thought if I could meet her eyes, I could make her see the truth inside me. I wished I dared stand, to go to her and try to hold her again. But she thought me drunk, and I knew I’d fall. I would not shame myself in front of her again.
‘A lot of the other girls and women were getting their fortunes told. But I didn’t have a penny, so I could only watch. But after a bit, the old man noticed me. I guess he thought I was shy. He asked me if I didn’t want to know my fortune. And I started crying, because I did, but I didn’t have a penny. Then Brinna the fish-wife laughed, and said there was no need for me to pay to know it. Everyone knew my future already. I was the daughter of a drunk, I’d be the wife of a drunk, and the mother of drunks.’ She whispered, ‘Everyone started laughing. Even the old man.’
‘Molly,’ I said. I don’t think she even heard me.
‘I still don’t have a penny,’ she said slowly. ‘But at least I know I won’t be the wife of a drunk. I don’t think I even want to be friends with one.’
‘You have to listen to me. You’re not being fair!’ My traitorous tongue slurred my words. ‘I—’
The door slammed.
‘—didn’t know you liked me that way,’ I said stupidly to the cold and empty room.
The shaking overtook me in earnest. But I wasn’t going to lose her that easily again. I rose and managed two strides before the floor rocked beneath me and I went to my knees. I remained there a bit, head hanging like a dog. I didn’t think she’d be impressed if I crawled after her. She’d probably kick me. If I could even find her. I crawled back to my bed instead, and clambered back onto it. I didn’t undress, but just dragged the edge of my blanket over me. My vision dimmed, closing in black from the edges, but I didn’t sleep right away. Instead, I lay there and thought what a stupid boy I had been last summer. I had courted a woman, thinking that I was walking out with a girl. Those three years difference in age had mattered so much to me, but in all the wrong ways. I had thought she had seen me as a boy, and despaired of winning her. So I had acted like a boy, instead of trying to make her see me as a man. And the boy had hurt her, and yes, deceived her, and in all likelihood, lost her for ever. The dark closed down, blackness everywhere but for one whirling spark.
She had loved the boy, and foreseen a life together for us. I clung to the spark and sank into sleep.
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Copyright
HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014
Copyright © Robin Hobb 2014
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Cover Illustration © Jackie Morris; lettering by Stephen Raw.
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A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007444175
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One: Withywoods
Buy Fool’s Assassin
PROLOGUE
My dear Lady Fennis,
We have been friends far too long for me to be circumspect. As you so delicately hinted, yes, there has been shattering news delivered to me. My stepson, Prince Chivalry, has exposed himself as the crude fellow I have always known him to be. His bastard child, fathered on a Mountain whore, has been revealed.
As shameful as that is, it could have been handled far more discreetly if his clever-as-a-stone brother Prince Verity had taken swift and decisive action to eliminate the disgrace. Instead, he has announced him in an indiscreet message to my husband.
And so, in the face of this base behaviour, what does my lord do? Why, not only does he insist the bastard must be brought to Buckkeep Castle, he then bestows on Chivalry the title to Withywoods, and sends him out to pasture there with his awkward barren wife. Withywoods! A fine estate that any number of my friends would be pleased to occupy, and he rewards it to his son for fathering a bastard with a foreign commoner! Nor does King Shrewd find it distasteful that said bastard has been brought back here to Buckkeep Castle where any member of my court may see the little Mountain savage.
And the final insult to me and my son? He has decreed that Prince Verity will now take up the title of King-in-Waiting, and be the next presumed heir to the throne. When Chivalry had the decency to secede his claim in the face of this disgrace, I secretly rejoiced, believing that Regal would immediately be recognized as the next king. While he may be younger than both his half-brothers, no one can dispute that his bloodlines are more noble, and his bearing as lordly as his name.
Truly, I am wasted here. As wasted as my son Regal. When I gave up my own reign and titles to be Shrewd’s queen, it was in the belief that any child I bore him would be seen as possessing far better lineage than the two reckless boys his former queen gave him, and would reign after Shrewd. But does he now look at Chivalry and admit his mistake in naming him heir? No. Instead he sets him aside only to install his doltish younger brother as King in Waiting. Verity. Hulking, square-faced Verity, with all the grace of an ox.
It is too much, my dear. Too much for me to bear. I would leave court, save that Regal would then be without a defender here.
A missive from Queen Desire to Lady Fennis of Tilth
I hated her when I was a boy. I recall the first time I found that missive, unfinished and never sent. I read it, confirming for myself that the queen I had never formally met had, indeed, hated me from the moment she knew of me. I made it mutual. I never asked Chade how he came by that letter. A bastard himself and half-brother to King Shrewd, Chade had never hesitated in pursuing the best interests of the Farseer throne. He had purloined it from Queen Desire’s desk, perhaps. Perhaps it had been his ploy to make it appear the queen snubbed Lady Fennis by not responding to her letter. Does it matter now? I do not know, for I do not know what effect my old mentor gained with his theft.
Yet I do wonder, sometimes, if it was an accident that I found and read Queen Desire’s letter to Lady Fennis, or if it was a deliberate revelation on Chade’s part. He was my mentor in those days, teaching me the assassin’s arts. Chade served his king ruthlessly, as assassin, spy and manipulator of the court at Buckkeep Castle, and taught me to do the same. A royal bastard, he told me, is only safe in a court so long as he is useful. Ostensibly, I was a lowly bastard, ignored or reviled as I navigated the dangerous currents of politics in the castle. But both King Shrewd and I knew that I was protected by the king’s hand and his assassin. Yet it was not only poisons and knife-work and subterfuge that he taught me, but what one must do to survive as a bastard of royal lineage. Did he seek to give me warning, or teach me to hate that I might be more firmly his? Even those questions come to me too late.
Over the years, I have seen Queen Desire in so many guises. First, she was the horrid woman who hated my father and hated me even more, the woman with the power to snatch the crown from my father’s head and condemn me to a life where even my name was the mark of my bastardy. I recall a time in my life when I feared even to let her see me.
Years after I arrived at Buckkeep, when my father was murdered at Withywoods, hers was the hand most likely behind it. And yet there was nothing I or Chade could do about it, no justice we could demand. I remember wondering if King Shrewd did not know or if he did not care. I remember knowing with absolute certainty that if Queen Desire wished my death, she could ask for it. I even wondered then if Chade would protect me or if he would bow to his duty and allow it to happen. Such things for a child to wonder.
Withywoods was an idea to me, a harsh place of banishment and humiliation. When I was a boy and I lived in Buckkeep, I was told that was where my father had gone, to hide from the shame that was me. He had abdicated his throne and crown, bowed his head to the hurt and anger of his lawful wife Patience, apologized to king and court for his failure of virtue and judgment, and fled from the bastard he had sired.
And so I imagined that place based on the only places I had ever lived, as a fortified castle on a hill. I had thought of it as a place like the stockade fortress at Moonseye in the Mountain Kingdom, or the steep walls of Buckkeep Castle perched on top of sheer and forbidding black cliffs overlooking the sea. I had imagined my father, brooding alone in a chill stone hall hung with battle pennants and ancient arms. I imagined stony fields that gave onto grey-fogged marshes.
