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

will tell,’ said an awed voice from the entry. I turned to find Verity beholding me with a mixture of pain and amusement on his face.

      ‘He’s the image of Chivalry at that age, is he not, my lord?’ Charim sounded immensely pleased with himself.

      ‘He is.’ Verity paused to clear his throat. ‘No man can doubt who fathered you, Fitz. I wonder what my father was thinking when he told me to show you well? Shrewd he is called and shrewd he is; I wonder what he expects to gain. Ah, well.’ He sighed. ‘That is his kind of kingship, and I leave it to him. Mine is simply to ask a foppish old man why he cannot keep his watch towers properly manned. Come, boy. It’s time we went down.’

      He turned and left without waiting for me. As I hastened after him, Charim caught at my arm. ‘Three steps behind him and on his left. Remember.’ And that is where I fell in behind him. As he moved down the hallway, others of our entourage stepped out from their chambers and followed their prince. All were decked in their most elaborate finery, to maximize this chance to be seen and envied outside Buckkeep. The fullness of my sleeves was quite reasonable compared to what some were sporting. At least my shoes were not hung with tiny chiming bells or gently rattling amber beads.

      Verity paused at the top of a stairway, and a hush fell over the folk gathered below. I looked out over the faces turned up to their prince, and had time to read on them every emotion known to mankind. Some women simpered while others appeared to sneer. Some young men struck poses that displayed their clothes; others, dressed more simply, straightened as if to be on guard. I read envy and love, disdain, fear, and on a few faces, hatred. But Verity gave none of them more than a passing glance before he descended. The crowd parted before us, to reveal Lord Kelvar himself waiting to conduct us into the dining hall.

      Kelvar was not what I expected. Verity had called him foppish, but what I saw was a rapidly ageing man, thin and harried, who wore his extravagant clothes as if they were armour against time. His greying hair was pulled back in a thin tail as if he were still a man-at-arms, and he walked with that peculiar gait of the very good swordsman.

      I saw him as Chade had taught me to see folk, and thought I understood him well enough even before we were seated. But it was after we had taken our places at table (and mine, to my surprise, was not so far down from the high folk) that I got my deepest glance into the man’s soul. And this not by any act of his, but in the bearing of his lady as she arrived to join us.

      I doubt if Kelvar’s Lady Grace was much more than a hand of years older than I, and she was decked out like a magpie’s nest. Never had I seen accoutrements before that spoke so garishly of expense and so little of taste. She took her seat in a flurry of flourishes and gestures that reminded me of a courting bird. Her scent rolled over me like a wave, and it too smelled of coin more than flowers. She had brought a little dog with her, a feist that was all silky hair and big eyes. She cooed over him as she settled him on her lap, and the little beast cuddled against her and set his chin on the edge of the table. And all the time, her eyes were on Prince Verity, trying to see if he marked her and was impressed. For my part, I watched Kelvar watch her perform her flirtations for the prince, and I thought to myself, there is more than half our problems with keeping Watch Island tower manned.

      Dinner was a trial to me. I was ravenous, but manners forbade that I show it. I ate as I had been instructed, picking up my spoon when Verity did, and setting aside a course as soon as he showed disinterest in it. I longed for a good platter of hot meat with bread to sop up the juices, but what we were offered were tidbits of meat oddly spiced, exotic fruit compotes, pale breads, and vegetables cooked to pallor and then seasoned. It was an impressive display of good food abused in the name of fashionable cooking. I could see that Verity’s appetite was as slack as mine, and wondered if all could see that the prince was not impressed.

      Chade had taught me better than I had known. I was able to nod politely to my dinner companion, a freckled young woman, and follow her conversation about the difficulty of getting good linen fabric in Rippon these days, while letting my ears stray enough to pick up key bits of talk about the table. None of it was about the business that had brought us here. Verity and Lord Kelvar would closet themselves tomorrow for the discussion of that. But much of what I overheard touched on the manning of Watch Island’s tower, and cast odd lights on it.

      I overheard grumblings that the roads were not as well maintained as previously. Someone commented she was glad to see that repair on Bayguard’s fortifications had been resumed. Another man complained that inland robbers were so common, he could scarcely count on two-thirds of his merchandise coming through from Farrow. This, too, seemed to be the basis of my dining companion’s complaint about the lack of good fabric. I looked at Lord Kelvar, and how he doted upon his young wife’s every gesture. As if Chade were whispering in my ear, I heard his judgement. ‘There is a duke whose mind is not upon the governing of his duchy.’ I suspected Lady Grace was wearing the required road repairs and the wages of those soldiers who would have kept his trade routes policed against brigands. Perhaps the jewels that dangled from her ears should have gone for pay to man Watch Island’s towers.

      Dinner finally ended. My stomach was full, but my hunger unabated, there had been so little substance to the meal. Afterwards, two minstrels and a poet entertained us, but I tuned my ears to the casual talk of folk rather than to the fine phrasings of the poet or the ballads of the musicians. Kelvar sat to the prince’s right, while his lady sat to the left, her lap-dog sharing the chair.

      Grace sat basking in the prince’s presence. Her hands often strayed to touch first an earring, then a bracelet. She was not accustomed to wearing so much jewellery. My suspicion was that she had come of simple stock, and was awed by her own position. One minstrel sang ‘Fair Rose amidst the Clover’, his eyes on her face, and was rewarded with her flushed cheeks. But as the evening wore on and I grew weary, I could tell that Lady Grace was fading. She yawned once, lifting a hand too late to cover it. Her little dog had gone to sleep in her lap, and twitched and yipped occasionally in his small-brained dreams. As she grew sleepier, she reminded me of a child; she cuddled her dog as if it were a doll, and leaned her head back into the corner of her chair. Twice she started to nod off. I saw her surreptitiously pinching the skin on her wrists in an effort to wake herself up. She was visibly relieved when Kelvar summoned the minstrels and poet forward to reward them for their evening. She took her lord’s arm to follow him off to their bedchamber while never relinquishing the dog she snuggled in her arm.

      I was relieved to make my way up to Verity’s antechamber. Charim had found me a featherbed and some blankets. My pallet was fully as comfortable as my own bed. I longed to sleep, but Charim gestured me into Verity’s bedchamber. Verity, ever the soldier, had no use for lackeys to stand about and tug his boots off for him. Charim and I alone attended him. Charim clucked and muttered as he followed Verity about, picking up and smoothing the garments the Prince so casually shed. Verity’s boots he immediately took off into a corner and began working more wax into the leather. Verity dragged a nightshirt on over his head and then turned to me.

      ‘Well? What have you to tell me?’

      And so I reported to him as I did to Chade, recounting all I had overheard, in as close to the words as I could manage, and noting who had spoken and to whom. At the last I added my own suppositions about the significance of it all. ‘Kelvar is a man who has taken a young wife, one who is easily impressed with wealth and gifts,’ I summarized. ‘She has no idea of the responsibilities of her own position, let alone his. Kelvar diverts money, time and thought from his duties to enthralling her. Were it not disrespectful to say so, I would imagine that his manhood is failing him, and he seeks to satisfy his young bride with gifts as a substitute.’

      Verity sighed heavily. He had flung himself onto the bed during the latter half of my recitation. Now he prodded at a too-soft pillow, folding it to give more support to his head. ‘Damn Chivalry,’ he said absently. “This is his kind of a knot, not mine. Fitz, you sound like your father. And were he here, he’d find some subtle way to handle this whole situation. Chiv would have had it solved by now, with one of his smiles and a kiss on someone’s hand. But that’s not my way, and I won’t pretend to it.’ He shifted about in his bed uncomfortably, as if he expected me to raise some argument to him about his duty. ‘Kelvar’s a man and a duke.