The Complete Farseer Trilogy: Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest

‘I do,’ I said, and then, as he waited, ‘I give you my word.’

‘Good.’ He spoke the word heartily. ‘Now. On to other things. Have you ever seen me before?’

‘No.’ I realized for an instant how strange that was. For, though there were often strangers in the keep, this man had obviously been a resident for a long, long time. And almost all those who lived there I knew by sight if not by name.

‘Do you know who I am, boy? Or why you’re here?’

I shook my head a quick negative to each question. ‘Well, no one else does either. So you mind it stays that way. Make yourself clear on that: you speak to no one of what we do here, nor of anything you learn. Understand that?’

My nod must have satisfied him, for he seemed to relax in the chair. His bony hands gripped the knobs of his knees through his woollen robe. ‘Good. Good. Now. You can call me Chade. And I shall call you?’ He paused and waited, but when I did not offer a name, he filled in, ‘Boy. Those are not names for either of us, but they’ll do, for the time we’ll have together. So. I’m Chade, and I’m yet another teacher that Shrewd has found for you. It took him a while to remember I was here, and then it took him a space to nerve himself to ask me. And it took me even longer to agree to teach you. But all that’s done now. As to what I’m to teach you … well.’

He rose and moved to the fire. He cocked his head as he stared into it, then stooped to take a poker and stir the embers to fresh flames. ‘It’s murder, more or less. Killing people. The fine art of diplomatic assassination. Or blinding, or deafening. Or a weakening of the limbs, or a paralysis or a debilitating cough or impotency. Or early senility, or insanity or … but it doesn’t matter. It’s all been my trade. And it will be yours, if you agree. Just know, from the beginning, that I’m going to be teaching you how to kill people. For your king. Not in the showy way Hod is teaching you, not on the battlefield where others see and cheer you on. No. I’ll be teaching you the nasty, furtive, polite ways to kill people. You’ll either develop a taste for it, or not. That isn’t something I’m in charge of. But I’ll make sure you know how. And I’ll make sure of one other thing, for that was the stipulation I made with King Shrewd: that you know what you are learning, as I never did when I was your age. So. I’m to teach you to be an assassin. Is that all right with you, boy?’

I nodded again, uncertain, but not knowing what else to do.

He peered at me. ‘You can speak, can’t you? You’re not a mute as well as a bastard, are you?’

I swallowed. ‘No, sir. I can speak.’

‘Well, then, do speak. Don’t just nod. Tell me what you think of all this. Of who I am and what I just proposed that we do.’

Invited to speak, I yet stood dumb. I stared at the poxed face, the papery skin of his hands, and felt the gleam of his green eyes on me. I moved my tongue inside my mouth, but found only silence. His manner invited words, but his visage was still more terrifying than anything I had ever imagined.

‘Boy,’ he said, and the gentleness in his voice startled me into meeting his eyes. ‘I can teach you even if you hate me, or if you despise the lessons. I can teach you if you are bored, or lazy or stupid. But I can’t teach you if you’re afraid to speak to me. At least, not the way I want to teach you. And I can’t teach you if you decide this is something you’d rather not learn. But you have to tell me. You’ve learned to guard your thoughts so well, you’re almost afraid to let yourself know what they are. But try speaking them aloud, now, to me. You won’t be punished.’

‘I don’t much like it,’ I blurted suddenly. ‘The idea of killing people.’

‘Ah.’ He paused. ‘Neither did I, when it came down to it. Nor do I, still.’ He sighed suddenly, deeply. ‘As each time comes, you’ll decide. The first time will be hardest. But know, for now, that that decision is many years away. And in the meantime, you have much to learn.’ He hesitated. ‘There is this, boy – and you should remember it in every situation, not just this one – learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn’t wrong. Or right. It’s just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That’s all. For now, do you think you could learn how to do it, and later decide if you wanted to do it?’

Such a question to put to a boy. Even then, something in me raised its hackles and sniffed at the idea, but child that I was, I could find no objection to raise. And curiosity was nibbling at me.

‘I can learn it.’

‘Good.’ He smiled, but there was a tiredness to his face and he didn’t seem as pleased as he might have. ‘That’s well enough, then. Well enough.’ He looked around the room. ‘We may as well begin tonight. Let’s start by tidying up. There’s a broom over there. Oh, but first, change out of your nightshirt into something … ah, there’s a ragged old robe over there. That’ll do for now. Can’t have the washer-folk wondering why your nightshirts smell of camphor and pain’s ease, can we? Now, you sweep up the floor a bit while I put away a few things.’

And so passed the next few hours. I swept, then mopped the stone floor. He directed me as I cleared the paraphernalia from the great table. I turned the herbs on their drying rack. I fed the three lizards he had caged in the corner, chopping up some sticky old meat into chunks that they gulped whole. I wiped clean a number of pots and bowls and stored them. And he worked alongside me, seeming grateful for the company, and chatted to me as if we were both old men. Or both young boys.

‘No letters as yet? No ciphering. Bagrash! What’s the old man thinking? Well, I shall see that remedied swiftly. You’ve your father’s brow, boy, and just his way of wrinkling it. Has anyone ever told you that before? Ah, there you are, Slink, you rascal! What mischief have you been up to now?’

A brown weasel appeared from behind a tapestry, and we were introduced to one another. Chade let me feed Slink quails’ eggs from a bowl on the table, and laughed when the little beast followed me about begging for more. He gave me a copper bracelet that I found under the table, warning that it might make my wrist green, and cautioning that if anyone asked me about it, I should say I had found it behind the stables.

At some time we stopped for honey cakes and hot, spiced wine. We sat together at a low table on some rugs before the fireplace, and I watched the firelight dancing over his scarred face and wondered why it had seemed so frightening. He noticed me watching him, and his face contorted in a smile. ‘Seems familiar, doesn’t it, boy? My face, I mean.’

It didn’t. I had been staring at the grotesque scars on the pasty white skin. I had no idea what he meant. I stared at him questioningly, trying to figure it out.

‘Don’t trouble yourself about it, boy. It leaves its tracks on all of us, and sooner or later, you’ll get the tumble of it. But now, well …’ He rose, stretching so that his cassock bared his skinny white calves. ‘Now it’s mostly later. Or earlier, depending on which end of the day you fancy most. Time you headed back to your bed. Now. You’ll remember that this is all a very dark secret, won’t you? Not just me and this room, but the whole thing, waking up at night and lessons in how to kill people, and all of it.’

‘I’ll remember,’ I told him, and then, sensing that it would mean something to him, I added, ‘You have my word.’

He chuckled, and then nodded almost sadly. I changed back into my nightshirt, and he saw me down the steps. He held his glowing light by my bed as I clambered in, and then smoothed the blankets over me as no one had done since I’d left Burrich’s chambers. I think I was asleep before he had even departed my bedside.

Brant was sent to wake me the next morning, so late was I in arising. I came awake groggy, my head pounding painfully. But as soon as he left the room, I sprang from my bed and raced to the corner of my room. Cold stone met my hands as I pushed against the wall there, and no crack in mortar or stone gave any sign of the secret door I felt sure must be there. Never for one instant did I think Chade had been a dream, and even if I had, there remained the simple copper bracelet on my wrist to prove he wasn’t.

I dressed hurriedly and passed through the kitchens for a slab of bread and cheese that I was still eating when I got to the stables. Burrich was out of sorts with my tardiness, and found fault with every aspect of my horsemanship and stable tasks. I remember well how he berated me: ‘Don’t think that because you’ve a room up in the castle, and a crest on your jerkin, you can turn into some sprawlabout rogue who snores in his bed until all hours and then only rises to fluff at his hair. I’ll not have it. Bastard you may be, but you’re Chivalry’s bastard, and I’ll make you a man he’ll be proud of.’

I paused, the grooming brushes still in my hands. ‘You mean Regal, don’t you?’

My unwonted question startled him. ‘What?’

‘When you talk about rogues who stay in bed all morning and do nothing except fuss about hair and garments, you mean how Regal is.’

Burrich opened his mouth and then shut it. His wind-reddened cheeks grew redder. ‘Neither you nor I,’ he muttered at last, ‘are in a position to criticize any of the princes. I meant only as a general rule, that sleeping the morning away ill befits a man, and even less so a boy.’

‘And never a prince.’ I said this, and then stopped, to wonder where the thought had come from.

‘And never a prince,’ Burrich agreed grimly. He was busy in the next stall with a gelding’s hot leg. The animal winced suddenly, and I heard Burrich grunt with the effort of holding him. ‘Your father never slept past the sun’s midpoint because he’d been drinking the night before. Of course, he had a head for wine such as I’ve never seen since, but there was discipline to it, too. Nor did he have some man standing by to rouse him. He got himself out of bed, and then expected those in his command to follow his example. It didn’t always make him popular, but his soldiers respected him. Men like that in a leader, that he demands of himself the same thing he expects of them. And I’ll tell you another thing: your father didn’t waste coin on decking himself out like a peacock. When he was a younger man, before he was wed to Lady Patience, he was at dinner one evening, at one of the lesser keeps. They’d seated me not too far below him, a great honour to me, and I overheard some of his conversation with the daughter they’d seated so hopefully next to the King-in-Waiting. She’d asked him what he thought of the emeralds she wore, and he had complimented her on them. “I had wondered, sir, if you enjoyed jewels, for you wear none of them yourself tonight,” she said flirtatiously. And he replied, quite seriously, that his jewels shone as brilliantly as hers, and much larger. “Oh, and where do you keep such gems, for I should dearly like to see them?” Well, he replied he’d be happy to show them to her later that evening, when it was darker. I saw her blush, expecting a tryst of some kind. And later he did invite her out onto the battlements with him, but he took with them half the dinner guests as well. And he pointed out the lights of the coast-watch towers, shining clearly in the dark, and told her that he considered those his best and dearest jewels, and that he spent the coin from her father’s taxes to keep them shining so. And then he pointed out to the guests the winking lights of that lord’s own watchmen in the fortifications of his keep, and told them that when they looked at their Duke, they should see those shining lights as the jewels on his brow. It was quite a compliment to the Duke and Duchess, and the other nobles there took note of it. The Outislanders had very few successful raids that summer. That was how Chivalry ruled. By example, and by the grace of his words. So should any real prince do.’

‘I’m not a real prince. I’m a bastard.’ It came oddly from my mouth, that word I heard so often and so seldom said.

Burrich sighed softly. ‘Be your blood, boy, and ignore what anyone else thinks of you.’

‘Sometimes I get tired of doing the hard things.’

‘So do I.’

I absorbed this in silence for a while as I worked my way down Sooty’s shoulder. Burrich, still kneeling by the grey, spoke suddenly. ‘I don’t ask any more of you than I ask of myself. You know that’s true.’

‘I know that,’ I replied, surprised that he’d mentioned it further.

‘I just want to do my best by you.’

This was a whole new idea to me. After a moment I asked, ‘Because if you could make Chivalry proud of me, of what you’d made me into, then maybe he would come back?’

The rhythmic sound of Burrich’s hands working liniment into the gelding’s leg slowed, then ceased abruptly. But he remained crouched down by the horse, and spoke quietly through the wall of the stall. ‘No. I don’t think that. I don’t suppose anything would make him come back. And even if he did,’ and Burrich spoke more slowly, ‘even if he did, he wouldn’t be who he was. Before, I mean.’

‘It’s all my fault he went away, isn’t it?’ The words of the weaving-women echoed in my head. But for the boy, he’d still be in line to be king.

Burrich paused long. ‘I don’t suppose it’s any man’s fault that he’s born …’ He sighed, and the words seemed to come more reluctantly. ‘And there’s certainly no way a babe can make itself not a bastard. No. Chivalry brought his downfall on himself, though that’s a hard thing for me to say.’ I heard his hands go back to work on the gelding’s leg.

‘And your downfall, too.’ I said it to Sooty’s shoulder, softly, never dreaming he’d hear.

But a moment or two later, I heard him mutter, ‘I do well enough for myself, Fitz. I do well enough.’

He finished his task and came around into Sooty’s stall. ‘Your tongue’s wagging like the town gossip today, Fitz. What’s got into you?’

It was my turn to pause and wonder. Something about Chade, I decided. Something about someone who wanted me to understand and have a say in what I was learning had freed up my tongue finally to ask all the questions I’d been carrying about for years. But because I couldn’t very well say so, I shrugged, and truthfully replied, ‘They’re just things I’ve wondered about for a long time.’

Burrich grunted his acceptance of the answer. ‘Well. It’s an improvement that you ask, though I won’t always promise you an answer. It’s good to hear you speak like a man. Makes me worry less about losing you to the beasts.’ He glared at me over the last words, and then gimped away. I watched him go, and remembered that first night I had seen him, and how a look from him had been enough to quell a whole room full of men. He wasn’t the same man. And it wasn’t just the limp that had changed the way he carried himself and how men looked at him. He was still the acknowledged master in the stables and no one questioned his authority there. But he was no longer the right hand of the King-in-Waiting. Other than watching over me, he wasn’t Chivalry’s man at all any more. No wonder he couldn’t look at me without resentment. He hadn’t sired the bastard that had been his downfall. For the first time since I had known him, my wariness of him was tinged with pity.

FIVE

Loyalties

In some kingdoms and lands, it is the custom that male children will have precedence over female in matters of inheritance. Such has never been the case in the Six Duchies. Titles are inherited solely by order of birth.

The one who inherits a title is supposed to view it as a stewardship. If a lord or lady were so foolish as to cut too much forest at once, or neglect vineyards or let the quality of the cattle become too inbred, the people of the duchy could rise up and come to ask the King’s Justice. It has happened, and every noble is aware it can happen. The welfare of the people belongs to the people, and they have the right to object if their duke stewards it poorly.

When the title-holder weds, he is supposed to keep this in mind. The partner chosen must be willing to be a steward likewise. For this reason, the partner holding a lesser title must surrender it to the next younger sibling. One can only be a true steward of one holding. On occasion this has led to divisions. King Shrewd married Lady Desire, who would have been Duchess of Farrow, had she not chosen to accept his offer and become Queen instead. It is said she came to regret her decision, and convinced herself that, had she remained Duchess, her power would have been greater. She married Shrewd knowing well that she was his second queen, and that the first had already borne him two heirs. She never concealed her disdain for the two older princes, and often pointed out that as she was much higher born than King Shrewd’s first queen, she considered her son Regal to be more royal than his two half-brothers. She attempted to instil this idea in others by her choice of name for her son. Unfortunately for her plans, most saw this ploy as being in poor taste. Some even mockingly referred to her as the Inland Queen, when, intoxicated, she would ruthlessly claim that she had the political influence to unite Farrow and Tilth into a new kingdom, one that would shrug off King Shrewd’s rule at her behest. But most put her claims down to her fondness for intoxicants, both alcoholic and herbal. It is true, however, that before she finally succumbed to her addictions, she was responsible for nurturing the rift between the Inland and Coastal Duchies.

I grew to look forward to my dark-time encounters with Chade. They never had a schedule, nor any pattern that I could discern. A week, even two, might go by between meetings, or he might summon me every night for a week straight, leaving me staggering about my day-time chores. Sometimes he summoned me as soon as the castle was abed; at other times, he called upon me in the wee hours of the morning. It was a strenuous schedule for a growing boy, yet I never thought of complaining to Chade or refusing one of his calls. Nor do I think it ever occurred to him that my night lessons presented a difficulty for me. Nocturnal himself, it must have seemed a perfectly natural time for him to be teaching me. And the lessons I learned were oddly suited to the darker hours of the world.

There was tremendous scope to his lessons. One evening might be spent in laborious study of the illustrations in a great herbal he kept, with the requirement that the next day I was to collect six samples that matched those illustrations. He never saw fit to hint as to whether I should look in the kitchen garden or the darker nooks of the forest for those herbs, but find them I did, and learned much of observation in the process.

There were games we played, too. For instance, he would tell me that I must go on the morrow to Sara the cook and ask her if this year’s bacon were leaner than last year’s. And then I must that evening report the entire conversation back to Chade, as close to word perfect as I could, and answer a dozen questions for him about how she stood, and was she left-handed and did she seem hard of hearing and what she was cooking at the time. My shyness and reticence were never accounted a good enough excuse for failing to execute such an assignment, and so I found myself meeting and coming to know a good many of the lesser folk of the keep. Even though my questions were inspired by Chade, every one of them welcomed my interest and was more than willing to share expertise. Without intending it, I began to garner a reputation as a ‘sharp youngster’ and a ‘good lad’. Years later I realized that the lesson was not just a memory exercise but also instruction in how to befriend the commoner folk, and to learn their minds. Many’s the time since then that a smile, a compliment on how well my horse had been cared for, and a quick question put to a stable-boy brought me information that all the coin in the kingdom couldn’t have bribed out of him.

Other games built my nerve as well as my powers of observation. One day Chade showed me a skein of yarn, and told me that, without asking Mistress Hasty, I must find out exactly where she kept the supply of yarn that matched it, and what herbs had been used in the dyeing of it. Three days later I was told I must spirit away her best shears, conceal them behind a certain rack of wines in the wine cellar for three hours, and then return them to where they had been, all undetected by her or anyone else. Such exercises initially appealed to a boy’s natural love of mischief, and I seldom failed at them. When I did, the consequences were my own look-out. Chade had warned me that he would not shield me from anybody’s wrath, and suggested that I have a worthy tale ready to explain away being where I should not be, or possessing that which I had no business possessing.

I learned to lie very well. I do not think it was taught me accidentally.

These were the lessons in my assassin’s primer. And more. Sleight of hand and the art of moving stealthily. Where to strike a man to render him unconscious. Where to strike a man so that he dies without crying out. Where to stab a man so that he dies without too much blood welling out. I learned it all rapidly and well, thriving under Chade’s approval of my quick mind.

Soon he began to use me for small jobs about the keep. He never told me, ahead of time, if they were tests of my skill, or actual tasks he wished accomplished. To me it made no difference; I pursued them all with a single-minded devotion to Chade and anything he commanded. In spring of that year, I treated the wine cups of a visiting delegation from the Bingtown traders so that they became much more intoxicated than they had intended. Later that same month, I concealed one puppet from a visiting puppeteer’s troupe, so that he had to present the Incidence of the Matching Cups, a light-hearted little folk tale instead of the lengthy historical drama he had planned for the evening. At the High-Summer Feast, I added a certain herb to a serving-girl’s afternoon pot of tea, so that she and three of her friends were stricken with loose bowels and could not wait the tables that night. In the autumn I tied a thread around the fetlock of a visiting noble’s horse, to give the animal a temporary limp that convinced the noble to remain at Buckkeep two days longer than he had planned. I never knew the underlying reasons for the tasks Chade set me. At that age, I set my mind to how I would do a thing, rather than why. And that, too, was a thing that I believe it was intended I learn: to obey without asking why an order was given.

There was one task that absolutely delighted me. Even at the time, I knew that the assignment was more than a whim of Chade’s. He summoned me for it in the last bit of dark before dawn. ‘Lord Jessup and his lady have been visiting this last two weeks. You know them by sight; he has a very long moustache, and she constantly fusses with her hair, even at the table. You know who I mean?’

I frowned. A number of nobles had gathered at Buckkeep, to form a council to discuss the increase in raids from the Outislanders. I gathered that the Coastal Duchies wanted more warships, but the Inland Duchies opposed sharing the taxes for what they saw as a purely coastal problem. Lord Jessup and Lady Dahlia were Inlanders. Jessup and his moustaches both seemed to have fitful temperaments and to be constantly impassioned. Lady Dahlia, on the other hand, seemed to take no interest at all in the council, but spent most of her time exploring Buckkeep.

‘She wears flowers in her hair, all the time? They keep falling out?’

‘That’s the one,’ Chade replied emphatically. ‘Good. You know her. Now, here’s your task, and I’ve no time to plan it with you. Some time today, at any moment today, she will send a page to Prince Regal’s room. The page will deliver something; a note, a flower, an object of some kind. You will remove the object from Regal’s room before he sees it. You understand?’

I nodded and opened my mouth to say something, but Chade stood abruptly and almost chased me from the room. ‘No time; it is nearly dawn!’ he declared.

I contrived to be in Regal’s room, in hiding, when the page arrived. From the way the girl slipped in, I was convinced this was not her first mission. She set a tiny scroll and a flower bud on Regal’s pillow, and slipped out of the room. In a moment both were in my jerkin, and later under my own pillow. I think the most difficult part of the task was refraining from opening the scroll. I turned scroll and flower over to Chade late that night.