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

poisoned.’

      ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’ I tried to make my tone light and bantering. I missed the Fool’s usual wry faces and mockeries from this conversation.

      ‘Only that you’d be wise to eat lightly, or not at all, of any food you do not prepare yourself.’

      ‘At all the feasts and festivities that will be there?’

      ‘No. Only at the ones you wish to survive.’ He turned to go.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said hastily. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude. I was looking for you, and I was so hot, and the door wasn’t latched, so I went in. I didn’t mean to pry.’

      His back was to me and he didn’t turn back as he asked, ‘And did you find it amusing?’

      ‘I –’ I could not think of anything to say, of any way to assure him that what I had seen there would stay only within my own mind. He took two steps and was closing the door. I blurted, ‘It made me wish there were a place as much me as that place is you. A place I would keep as secret.’

      The door halted a handsbreadth short of closed. ‘Take some advice, and you may survive this trip. When considering a man’s motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.’

      And the door closed and the Fool was gone. But his last words had been cryptic and frustrating enough that I thought perhaps he had forgiven me my trespass.

      I stuffed the seapurge into my jerkin, not wanting it, but afraid to leave it now. I glanced about my room, but as always it was a bare and practical place. Mistress Hasty had seen to my packing, not trusting me with my new garments. I had noticed that the barred buck on my crest had been replaced with a buck with his antlers lowered to charge. ‘Verity ordered it,’ was all she said when I asked about it. ‘I like it better than the barred buck myself. Don’t you?’

      ‘I suppose so,’ I replied, and that had been the end of it. A name and a crest. I nodded to myself, shouldered my chest of herbs and scrolls, and went down to join the caravan.

      As I was going down the steps, I encountered Verity coming up. At first I scarcely knew him, for he was ascending like a crabbed old man. I stepped out of his way to let him pass, and then knew him as he glanced at me. It is a strange thing to see a once-familiar man like that, encountered as a stranger. I marked how his clothes hung on him now, and the bushy dark hair I remembered had a peppering of grey. He smiled absently at me, and then, as if it had suddenly occurred to him, he stopped me.

      ‘You’re leaving for the Mountain Kingdom? For the wedding ceremony?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Do me a favour, boy?’

      ‘Of course,’ I said, taken aback by the rust in his voice.

      ‘Speak well of me to her. Truthfully, mind you, I’m not asking for lies. But speak well of me. I’ve always thought that you thought well of me.’

      ‘I do,’ I said to his retreating back. ‘I do, sir.’ But he didn’t turn or make a reply, and I felt much as I had when the Fool left me.

      The courtyard was a milling of folk and animals. There were no carts this time; the roads into the mountains were notoriously bad, and it had been decided that pack animals would have to suffice for the sake of swiftness. It would not do for the royal entourage to be late for the wedding; it was bad enough that the groom was not attending.

      The flocks and herds had been sent on days before. It was expected that our trip would take two weeks, and three had been allowed for it. I saw to fastening the cedar chest onto a pack animal, and then stood beside Sooty and waited. Even in the cobbled courtyard, dust stirred thick in the hot summer air. Despite all the careful planning that had gone into it, the caravan seemed chaotic. I glimpsed Sevrens, Regal’s favourite valet. Regal had sent him back to Buckkeep a month ago, with specific instructions about certain garments he wished created. Sevrens was following Hands, dithering and expostulating about something, and whatever it was, Hands was not looking patient about it. When Mistress Hasty had been giving me final instructions on the care of my new garments, she had divulged that Sevrens was taking enough new garments, hats and accoutrements for Regal that he had been allotted three pack animals to carry them. I imagined that caring for the three animals had fallen to Hands, for Sevrens was an excellent valet, but timid around the larger animals. Rowd, Regal’s ready man, hulked after both of them, looking ill-tempered and impatient. On one wide shoulder he carried yet another trunk, and perhaps the loading of this additional item was what was fretting Sevrens. I soon lost sight of them in the crowd.

      I was surprised to discover Burrich checking the lead-lines on the breeding horses and the Princess’s gift mare. Surely whoever was in charge of them could do that, I thought. And then, as I saw him mount, I realized that he, too, would be part of this procession. I looked about to see who was accompanying him, but saw none of the stable-boys I knew, save Hands … Cob was already in Jhaampe with Regal. So Burrich had taken this on himself. I was not surprised.

      August was there, astride a fine grey mare, waiting with an impassivity that was almost inhuman. Already his time in the coterie had changed him. Once he had been a chubby youth, quiet but pleasant. He had the same black bushy hair as Verity, and I had heard it said that he resembled his cousin as a boy. I reflected that as his Skill duties increased, he would probably resemble Verity even more. He would be present at the wedding, as a sort of window for Verity as Regal uttered the vows on his brother’s behalf. Regal’s voice, August’s eyes, I mused to myself. What did I go as? His poignard?

      I mounted Sooty, as much to be up and away from the folk exchanging goodbyes and last-minute instructions as for any other reason. I wished to Eda we could be away and on the road. It seemed to take forever for the straggling line to form and for the tying and strapping of bundles to be accomplished. And then, almost abruptly, the standards were lifted, a horn was blown, and the line of horses, laden pack-animals and folk began to move. I looked up once, to see that Verity had actually come out to stand on top of the tower and watch us depart. I waved up at him, but doubted that he knew me amidst so many. And then we were out of the gates, and winding up the hilly path that led away from Buckkeep and to the west.

      Our path would lead us up the banks of the Buck River, which we would ford at its wide shallows near where the borders of Buck and Farrow Duchies touched. From there we would journey across Farrow’s wide plains, in baking heat I had never encountered before, until we reached Blue Lake. From Blue Lake, we would follow a river named simply Cold whose origins were in the Mountain Kingdom. From the Cold Ford the trading road began, that led between the mountains and through their shadows and up, ever up, to Storm Pass, and thence to the thick green forests of the Rain Wilds. We would not go as far as that, but would stop at Jhaampe, which was as close to a city as the Mountain Kingdom possessed.

      In some ways, it was an unremarkable journey, if one discounts all that inevitably goes with such journeys. After the first three days or so, things settled into a remarkably monotonous routine, varied only by the different countryside we passed. Every little village or hamlet along our road turned out to greet us and delay us, with official best wishes and felicitations for the Crown Prince’s wedding festivities.

      But after we reached the wide plains of Farrow, such hamlets were few and far between. Farrow’s rich farms and trading cities were far to the north of our path, along the Vin River. We travelled Farrow’s plains, where people were mostly nomadic herders, creating towns only in the winter months when they settled along the trade routes for what they called ‘the green season’. We passed herds of sheep, goats, or horses; or more rarely, the dangerous, rangy swine they called haragars, but our contact with the people of that region was usually limited to the sight of their conical tents in the distance, or some herder standing tall in his saddle, holding aloft his crook in greeting.

      Hands and I became reacquainted. We would share food and a small cook-fire in the evenings, and he would regale me with tales of Sevren’s nattering worries of dust getting into silk robes or bugs getting into fur collars and velvet getting chafed to pieces during