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

icy harshness had come into Regal’s voice, and I saw Burrich flinch from his voice as I had seen him cower from nothing else. It made me afraid, and I drew the blanket up over my head and burrowed deeper into the straw. Beside me, Vixen growled lightly in the back of her throat. I think it made Regal step back, but I cannot be sure. The men left soon after, and if they spoke any more than that, no memory of it lies within me.

      Time passed, and I think it was two, or perhaps three weeks later that I found myself clinging to Burrich’s belt and trying to wrap my short legs around a horse behind him as we left that chill village and began what seemed to me an endless journey down to warmer lands. I suppose at some point Chivalry must have come to see the bastard he had sired, and must have passed some sort of judgement on himself as regarded me. But I have no memory of such a meeting with my father. The only image I carry of him in my mind is from his portrait on the wall in Buckkeep. Years later I was given to understand that his diplomacy had gone well indeed, securing a treaty and peace that lasted well into my teens and earning the respect and even fondness of the Chyurda.

      In truth, I was his only failure that year, but I was a monumental one. He preceded us home to Buckkeep, where he abdicated his claim to the throne. By the time we arrived, he and Lady Patience were gone from court, to live as the Lord and Lady of Withywoods. I have been to Withywoods. Its name bears no relationship to its appearance. It is a warm valley, centred on a gently flowing river that carves a wide plain that nestles between gently rising and rolling foothills. A place to grow grapes and grain and plump children. It is a soft holding, far from the borders, far from the politics of court, far from anything that had been Chivalry’s life up to then. It was a pasturing out, a gentle and genteel exile for a man who would have been king. A velvet smothering for a warrior and a silencing of a rare and skilled diplomat.

      And so I came to Buckkeep, sole child and bastard of a man I’d never know. Prince Verity became King-in-Waiting and Prince Regal moved up a notch in the line of succession. If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I became.

       TWO

       Newboy

      There are many legends about Taker, the first Outislander to claim Buckkeep as the First Duchy and the founder of the royal line. One is that the raiding voyage he was on was his first and only foray out from whatever cold harsh island bore him. It is said that upon seeing the timbered fortifications of Buckkeep, he had announced, ‘If there’s a fire and a meal there, I shan’t be leaving again.’ And there was, and he didn’t.

      But family rumour says that he was a poor sailor, made sick by the heaving water and salt-fish rations that other Outislanders throve upon. He and his crew had been lost for days upon the water, and if he had not managed to seize Buckkeep and make it his own, his crew would have drowned him. Nevertheless, the old tapestry in the Great Hall shows him as a well-thewed stalwart grinning fiercely over the prow of his vessel as his oarsmen propel him toward an ancient Buckkeep of logs and poorly dressed stone.

      Buckkeep had begun its existence as a defensible position on a navigable river at the mouth of a bay with excellent anchorage. Some petty landchief, whose name has been lost in the mists of history, saw the potential for controlling trade on the river and built the first stronghold there. Ostensibly, he had built it to defend both river and bay from the Outislander raiders who came every summer to plunder up and down the river. What he had not reckoned on were the raiders that infiltrated his fortifications by treachery. The towers and walls became their toehold. They moved their occupations and domination up the river, and, rebuilding his timber fort into towers and walls of dressed stone, finally made Buckkeep the heart of the First Duchy, and eventually the capital of the kingdom of the Six Duchies.

      The ruling house of the Six Duchies, the Farseers, were descended from those Outislanders. They had, for several generations, kept up their ties with the Outislanders, making courting voyages and returning home with plump dark brides of their own folk. And so the blood of the Outislanders still ran strong in the royal lines and the noble houses, producing children with black hair and dark eyes and muscled, stocky limbs. And with those attributes went a predilection for the Skill, and all the dangers and weaknesses inherent in such blood. I had my share of that heritage, too.

      But my first experience of Buckkeep held nothing of history or heritage. I knew it only as an end place for a journey, a panorama of noise and people, carts and dogs and buildings and twisting streets that led finally to an immense stone stronghold on the cliffs that overlooked the city sheltered below it. Burrich’s horse was weary, and his hooves slipped on the often slimy cobbles of the city streets. I held on grimly to his belt, too weary and aching even to complain. I craned my head up once to stare at the tall grey towers and walls of the keep above us. Even in the unfamiliar warmth of the sea breeze, it looked chill and forbidding. I leaned my forehead against his back and felt ill in the brackish iodine smell of the immense water. And that was how I came to Buckkeep.

      Burrich had quarters over the stables, not far from the mews. It was there he took me, along with the hounds and Chivalry’s hawk. He saw to the hawk first, for it was sadly bedraggled from the trip. The dogs were overjoyed to be home, and were suffused with a boundless energy that was very annoying to anyone as weary as I. Nosy bowled me over half a dozen times before I could convey to his thick-skulled hound’s mind that I was weary and half-sick and in no mood for play. He responded as any pup would, by seeking out his former litter-mates and immediately getting himself into a semi-serious fight with one of them that was quelled by a shout from Burrich. Chivalry’s man he might be, but when he was at Buckkeep, he was the Master for hounds, hawks, and horses.

      His own beasts seen to, he proceeded to walk through the stables, surveying all that had been done, or left undone, in his absence. Stable-boys, grooms, and falconers appeared as if by magic to defend their charges from any criticisms. I trotted at his heels for as long as I could keep up. It was only when I finally surrendered, and sank wearily onto a pile of straw, that he appeared to notice me. A look of irritation, and then great weariness passed across his face.

      ‘Here, you, Cob. Take young fitz there to the kitchens and see that he’s fed, and then bring him back up to my quarters.’

      Cob was a short, dark dog-boy, perhaps ten years old, who had just been praised over the health of a litter that had been whelped in Burrich’s absence. Moments before he had been basking in Burrich’s approval. Now his grin faltered, and he looked at me dubiously. We regarded one another as Burrich moved off down the line of stalls with his entourage of nervous caretakers. Then the boy shrugged, and went into a half-crouch to face me. ‘Are you hungry, then, fitz? Shall we go find you a bite?’ he asked invitingly, in exactly the same tone as he had used to coax his puppies out where Burrich could see them. I nodded, relieved that he expected no more from me than from a puppy, and followed him.

      He looked back often to see if I were keeping up. No sooner were we outside the stables than Nosy came frolicking up to join me. The hound’s evident affection for me raised me in Cob’s estimation, and he continued to speak to both of us in short encouraging phrases, telling us there was food just ahead, come along now, no, don’t go off sniffing after that cat, come along now, there’s some good fellows.

      The stables had been bustling, with Verity’s men putting up their horses and gear and Burrich finding fault with all that had not been done up to his standards in his absence. But as we drew closer to the inner keep, the foot traffic increased. Folk brushed by us on all manner of errands: a boy carrying an immense slab of bacon on his shoulder, a giggling cluster of girls, arms heavy with stewing reeds and heather, a scowling old man with a basket of flopping fish, and three young women in motley and bells, their voices ringing as merrily as their chimes.

      My nose informed me that we were getting closer to the kitchens, but the traffic increased proportionately until we drew near a door with a veritable crush of people going in and out. Cob stopped, and Nosy