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

No one could look at him and not see how badly he had been beaten. The Witness Stones had found him lacking, and all who saw him would know. His gaunt face was a landscape of purples and greens washed over with yellows. His lower lip was split in the middle, and cut at the corner of his mouth. He wore a long-sleeved robe that covered his arms, but the flowing looseness of it contrasted so strongly with his usual tightly-laced shirts and tunics that it was like seeing the man in his nightshirt. His hands, too, were purple and knobby, but I could not recall that I had seen bruises on Burrich’s body. I concluded that he had used them in a vain attempt to shield his face. He still carried his little whip with him, but I doubted he had the capability to swing it effectively.

      And so we inspected one another. I took no satisfaction in his bruises or his disgrace. I felt something akin to shame for them. I had believed so strongly in his invulnerability and superiority that this evidence of his mere humanity left me feeling foolish. That unbalanced his composure. Twice he opened his mouth to speak to me. The third time, he turned his back on the class and said, ‘Begin your physical limbering. I will observe you to see if you are moving correctly.’

      The ends of his words were soft, spoken through a painful mouth. And as we dutifully stretched and swayed and bowed in unison, he crabbed awkwardly about the tower garden. He tried not to lean on the wall, or to rest too often. Gone was the slap, slap, slap of the whip against his thigh that had formerly orchestrated our efforts. Instead, he gripped it as if afraid he might drop it. For my part, I was grateful that Burrich had made me get up and move. My bound ribs didn’t permit me the full flexibility of motion that Galen had formerly commanded from us, but I made an honest attempt at it.

      He offered us nothing new that day, only going over what we had already learned, and the lessons came to an early end, before the sun was even down. ‘You have done well,’ he offered lamely. ‘You have earned these free hours, for I am pleased you have continued to study in my absence.’ Before dismissing us, he called each of us before him, for a brief touch of the Skill. The others left reluctantly, with many a backward glance, curious as to how he would deal with me. As the numbers of my fellow students dwindled, I braced myself for a solitary confrontation.

      But even that was a disappointment. He called me before him, and I came, as silent and outwardly respectful as the others. I stood before him as they had, and he made a few brief passes of his hands before my face and over my head. Then he said in a cold voice, ‘You shield too well. You must learn to relax your guard over your thoughts if you are either to send them forth or receive those of others. Go.’

      And I left, as the others had, but regretfully. Privately I wondered if he had made a real attempt to use the Skill on me. I had felt no brush of it. I descended the stairs, aching and bitter, wondering why I was trying.

      I went to my room, and then to the stables. I gave Sooty a cursory brushing while Smithy watched. Still I felt restless and dissatisfied. I knew I should rest, that I would regret it if I did not. Stone walk? Smithy suggested, and I agreed to take him into town. He galloped and snuffled circles around me as I made my way down from the keep. It was a blustery afternoon after a calm morning; a storm was building offshore. But the wind was unseasonably warm, and I felt the fresh air clearing my head, and the steady rhythm of walking soothed and stretched the muscles that Galen’s exercises had left bunched and aching. Smithy’s sensory prattle grounded me firmly in the immediate world so that I could not dwell on my frustrations.

      I told myself it was Smithy who led us so directly to Molly’s shop. Puppylike, he had returned to where he had been welcomed before. Molly’s father had kept his bed that day, and the shop was fairly quiet. A single customer lingered, talking to Molly. Molly introduced him to me as Jade. He was a mate off some Sealbay trading vessel, not quite twenty, and he spoke to me as if I were ten, smiling past me at Molly all the while. He was full of tales of Red Ships and sea storms. He had a red stone earring in one ear, and a new beard curled along his jaw. He took far too long to select candles and a new brass lamp, but finally he left.

      ‘Close the store for a bit,’ I urged Molly. ‘Let’s go down to the beach. The wind is lovely today.’

      She shook her head regretfully. ‘I’m behind in my work. I should dip tapers all this afternoon if I have no customers. And if I do have customers, I should be here.’

      I felt unreasonably disappointed. I quested toward her, and discovered how much she actually wished to go. ‘There’s not that much daylight left,’ I said persuasively. ‘You can always dip tapers this evening. And your customers will come back tomorrow if they find you closed today.’

      She cocked her head, looked thoughtful, and abruptly set aside the wicking she held. ‘You’re right, you know. The fresh air will do me good.’ And she took up her cloak with an alacrity that delighted Smithy and surprised me. We closed up the shop and left.

      Molly set her usual brisk pace. Smithy frolicked about her, delighted. We talked, in a cursory way. The wind put roses in her cheeks, and her eyes seemed brighter in the cold. And I thought she looked at me more often, and more pensively than she usually did.

      The town was quiet, and the market all but deserted. We went to the beach, and walked sedately where we had raced and shrieked but a few years before. She asked me if I had learned to light a lantern before going down steps at night, and that mystified me, until I remembered that I had explained my injuries as a fall down a dark staircase. She asked me if the schoolteacher and the horsemaster were still at odds, and by this I discerned that Burrich and Galen’s challenge at the Witness Stones had become something of a local legend already. I assured her that peace had been restored. We spent some little time gathering a certain kind of seaweed that she wanted to flavour her chowder with that evening. Then, because I was winded, we sat in the lee of some rocks and watched Smithy make numerous attempts to clear the beach of gulls.

      ‘So. I hear Prince Verity is to wed,’ she began conversationally.

      ‘What?’ I asked, amazed.

      She laughed heartily. ‘Newboy, I have never met anyone as immune to gossip as you seem to be. How can you live right up there in the keep and know nothing of that which is the common talk of the town? Verity has agreed to take a bride, to assure the succession. But the story in town is that he is too busy to do his courting himself, so Regal will find him a lady.’

      ‘Oh, no.’ My dismay was honest. I was picturing big bluff Verity paired with one of Regal’s sugar-crystal women. Whenever there was a festival of any kind in the keep, Springsedge or Winterheart or Harvestday, here they came, from Chalced and Farrow and Bearns, in carriages or on richly-caparisoned palfreys or riding in litters. They wore gowns like butterflies’ wings, ate as daintily as sparrows, and seemed to flutter about and perch always in Regal’s vicinity. And he would sit in their midst, in his own silk and velvet hues, and preen while their musical voices tinkled around him and their fans and fancywork trembled in their fingers. ‘Prince-catchers’, I’d heard them called, noble women who displayed themselves like goods in a store window in the hopes of wedding one of the royals. Their behaviour was not improper, not quite. But to me it seemed desperate, and Regal cruel as he smiled first on this one and then danced all evening with that one, only to rise to a late breakfast and walk yet another through the gardens. They were Regal’s worshippers. I tried to picture one on Verity’s arm as he stood watching the dancers at a ball, or quietly weaving in his study while Verity pondered and sketched at the maps he so loved. No garden strolls – Verity took his walks along the docks and through the crops, stopping often to talk to the seafolk and farmers behind their ploughs. Dainty slippers and embroidered skirts would surely not follow him there.

      Molly slipped a penny into my hand.

      ‘What’s this for?’

      ‘To pay for whatever you’ve been thinking so hard that you’ve been sitting on the edge of my skirt while I’ve twice asked you to lift up. I don’t think you’ve heard a word I’ve said.’

      I sighed. ‘Verity and Regal are so different, I cannot imagine one choosing a wife for the other.’

      Molly looked puzzled.

      ‘Regal will choose someone who is beautiful