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

stirred all the Duchies as if he’d poked a stick in a hive.’

      Burrich lifted his eyes from Nosy’s eager face. ‘Well, fitz. Guess you got a taste of it today. Fair scared poor Cob to death, your running off like that. Now, are you hurt? Did anyone rough you up? I should have known there would be those would blame all the stir on you. Come here, then. Come on.’

      When I hesitated, he moved over to a pallet of blankets made up near the fire and patted it invitingly. ‘See. There’s a place here for you, all ready. And there’s bread and meat on the table for both of you.’

      His words made me aware of the covered platter on the table. Flesh, Nosy’s senses confirmed, and I was suddenly full of the smell of the meat. Burrich laughed at our rush to the table, and silently approved how I shared a portion out to Nosy before filling my own jaws. We ate to repletion, for Burrich had not under-estimated how hungry a pup and a boy would be after the day’s misadventures. And then, despite our long nap earlier, the blankets so close to the fire were suddenly immensely inviting. Bellies full, we curled up with the flames baking our backs and slept.

      When we awoke the next day, the sun was well risen and Burrich already gone. Nosy and I ate the heel of last night’s loaf and gnawed the leftover bones clean before we descended from Burrich’s quarters. No one challenged us or appeared to take any notice of us.

      Outside, another day of chaos and revelry had begun. The keep was, if anything, more swollen with people. Their passage stirred the dust and their mixing voices were an overlay to the shushing of the wind and the more distant muttering of the waves. Nosy drank it all in, every scent, every sight, every sound. The doubled sensory impact dizzied me. As I walked, I gathered from snatches of conversation that our arrival had coincided with some spring rite of merriment and gathering. Chivalry’s abdication was still the main topic, but it did not prevent the puppet shows and jugglers from making every corner a stage for their antics. At least one puppet show had already incorporated Chivalry’s fall from grace into its bawdy comedy, and I stood anonymous in the crowd and puzzled over dialogue about sowing the neighbour’s fields that had the adults roaring with laughter.

      But very soon the crowds and the noise became oppressive to both of us, and I let Nosy know I wished to escape it all. We left the keep, passing out of the thick-walled gate past guards intent upon flirting with the merrymakers as they came and went. One more boy and dog leaving on the heels of a fish-mongering family were nothing to notice. And with no better distraction in sight, we followed the family as they wound their way down the streets away from the keep and towards the town of Buckkeep. We dropped further and further behind them as new scents demanded that Nosy investigate and then urinate at every corner, until it was just him and me wandering in the city.

      Buckkeep then was a windy, raw place. The streets were steep and crooked, with paving stones that rocked and shifted out of place under the weight of passing carts. The wind blasted my inland nostrils with the scent of beached kelp and fish guts while the keening of the gulls and sea-birds were an eerie melody above the rhythmic shushing of the waves. The town clings to the rocky black cliffs much like limpets and barnacles cling to the pilings and quays that venture out into the bay. The houses were of stone and wood, with the more elaborate wooden ones built higher up the rocky face and cut more deeply into it.

      Buckkeep Town was relatively quiet compared to the festivity and crowds up in the keep. Neither of us had the sense or experience to know the waterfront town was not the best place for a six-year-old and a puppy to wander. Nosy and I explored eagerly, sniffing our way down Baker’s Street and through a near-deserted market and then along the warehouses and boat-sheds that were the lowest level of the town. Here the water was close, and we walked on wooden piers as often as we did on sand and stone. Business here was going on as usual with little allowance for the carnival atmosphere up in the keep. Ships must dock and unload as the rising and falling of the tides allow, and those who fish for a living must follow the schedules of the finned creatures, not those of men.

      We soon encountered children, some busy at the lesser tasks of their parents’ crafts, but some idlers like ourselves. I fell in easily with them, with little need for introductions or any of the adult pleasantries. Most of them were older than I, but several were as young or younger. None of them seemed to think it odd I should be out and about on my own. I was introduced to all the important sights of the city, including the swollen body of a cow that had washed up at the last tide. We visited a new fishing boat under construction at a dock littered with curling shavings and strong-smelling pitch spills. A fish-smoking rack left carelessly untended furnished a mid-day repast for a half-dozen of us. If the children I was with were more ragged and boisterous than those who passed at their chores, I did not notice. And had anyone told me I was passing the day with a pack of beggar brats denied entrance to the keep because of their light-fingered ways, I would have been shocked. At the time, I knew only that it was suddenly a lively and pleasant day, full of places to go and things to do.

      There were a few youngsters, larger and more rambunctious, who would have taken the opportunity to set the newcomer on his ear had Nosy not been with me and showing his teeth at the first aggressive shove. But as I did not show any signs of wanting to challenge their leadership, I was allowed to follow. I was suitably impressed by all their secrets, and I would venture that by the end of the long afternoon, I knew the poorer quarter of town better than many who had grown up above it.

      I was not asked for a name, but simply was called Newboy. The others had names as simple as Dick or Kerry, or as descriptive as Netpicker and Nosebleed. The last might have been a pretty little thing in better circumstances. She was a year or two older than I, but very outspoken and quick-witted. She got into one dispute with a big boy of twelve, but she showed no fear of his fists, and her sharp-tongued taunts soon had everyone laughing at him. She took her victory calmly and left me awed by her toughness. But the bruises on her face and thin arms were layered in shades of purple, blue and yellow, while a crust of dried blood below one ear belied her name. Even so, Nosebleed was a lively one, her voice shriller than the gulls that wheeled above us. Late afternoon found Kerry, Nosebleed and me on a rocky shore beyond the net-menders’ racks, with Nosebleed teaching me to scour the rocks for tight-clinging sheels. These she levered off expertly with a sharpened stick. She was showing me how to use a nail to pry the chewy inmates out of their shells when another girl hailed us with a shout.

      The neat blue cloak that blew around her and the leather shoes on her feet set her apart from my companions. Nor did she come to join our harvesting, but only came close enough to call, ‘Molly, Molly, he’s looking for you, high and low. He waked up near sober an hour ago, and took to calling you names as soon as he found you gone and the fire out.’

      A look mixed of defiance and fear passed over Nosebleed’s face. ‘Run away, Kittne, but take my thanks with you. I’ll remember you next time the tides bare the kelpcrabs’ beds.’

      Kittne ducked her head in a brief acknowledgement and immediately turned and hastened back the way she had come.

      ‘Are you in trouble?’ I asked Nosebleed when she did not go back to turning over stones for sheels.

      ‘Trouble?’ She gave a snort of disdain. ‘That depends. If my father can stay sober long enough to find me, I might be in for a bit of it. More than likely he’ll be drunk enough tonight that not a one of whatever he hurls at me will hit. More than likely!’ she repeated firmly when Kerry opened his mouth to object to this. And with that she turned back to the rocky beach and our search for sheel.

      We were crouched over a many-legged grey creature that we found stranded in a tide pool when the crunch of a heavy boot on the barnacled rocks brought all our heads up. With a shout Kerry fled down the beach, never pausing to look back. Nosy and I sprang back, Nosy crowding against me, teeth bared bravely as his tail tickled his cowardly little belly. Molly Nosebleed was either not so fast to react, or resigned to what was to come. A gangly man caught her a smack on the side of the head. He was a skinny man, red-nosed and raw-boned, so that his fist was like a knot at the end of his bony arm, but the blow was still enough to send Molly sprawling. Barnacles cut into her wind-reddened knees, and when she crabbed aside to avoid the clumsy kick he aimed at her, I winced at the salty sand that packed the new cuts.

      ‘Faithless