Assassin’s Quest. Робин Хобб

you do to Nighteyes, asking that any of Old Blood who hear you pass word back to Holly and Sleet of Crowsneck. Those who hear may come to help you. Even if they do not, they will send word to me, and I will do what I can.’

      Rolf let out a sudden huff of breath. ‘We will do what we can,’ he amended her words. ‘But you would be wiser to stay here and learn first how to better protect yourself.’

      I nodded to his words, but resolved privately that I would not involve any of them in my revenge against Regal. When I glanced up at Rolf, he smiled at me wryly, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Go then. But be wary, both of you. Before the moon goes down you’ll leave Buck behind and be in Farrow. If you think King Regal has a grip on us here, wait until you get to where folk believe he has a right to it.’

      I nodded grimly to that, and once more Nighteyes and I were on our way.

SEVEN Farrow

      Lady Patience, the Lady of Buckkeep as she came to be called, rose to power in a unique fashion. She had been born into a noble family and was by birth a lady. She was raised to the loftier status of Queen-in-Waiting by her precipitous marriage to King-in-Waiting Chivalry. She never asserted herself in either position to take the power that birth and marriage had brought her. It was only when she was alone, almost abandoned, as eccentric Lady Patience at Buckkeep that she gathered to herself the reins of influence. She did it, as she had done everything else in her life, in a haphazard, quaint way that would have availed any other woman not at all.

      She did not call on noble family connections, nor exert influential connections based on her deceased husband’s status. Instead she began with that lowest tier of power, the so-called men-at-arms, who were just as frequently women. Those few remaining of King Shrewd’s personal guard, and Queen Kettricken’s guard had been left in the peculiar position of guardians with nothing left to guard. The Buckkeep Guard had been supplanted in their duties by the personal troops that Lord Bright brought with him from Farrow, and delegated to lesser tasks that involved the cleaning and maintenance of the keep. The former guards were erratically paid, had lost respect among and for themselves, and were too often idle or occupied with degrading tasks. The Lady Patience, ostensibly because they were not otherwise busied, began to solicit their services. She began by requesting a guard when she abruptly began to ride out on her ancient palfrey, Silk. Afternoon rides gradually lengthened to all-day forays, and then to overnight visits to villages that had either been raided or feared raids. In the raided villages, she and her maid Lacey did what they could for the injured, logged down a tally of those slain or Forged, and provided, in the form of her guard, strong backs to aid in the clearing of rubble from the main streets and the raising of temporary shelter for folks left homeless. This, while not true work for fighters, was a sharp reminder of what they had been trained to fight against, and of what happened when there were no defenders. The gratitude of the folk they aided restored to the guard their pride and inner cohesiveness. In the unraided villages, the guard were a small show of force that Buckkeep and the Farseer pride still existed. In several villages and towns, makeshift stockades were raised where the folk could retreat from the Raiders and have a small chance of defending themselves.

      There is no record of Lord Bright’s feelings regarding Lady Patience’s forays. She never declared these expeditions in any official way. They were her pleasure rides, the guards that accompanied her had volunteered to do so, and likewise for the duties she put them to in the villages. Some, as she came to trust them, ran ‘errands’ for her. Such errands might involve the distance carrying of messages to keeps in Rippon, Bearns and even Shoaks, requesting news of how the coastal towns fared, and giving news of Buck; they took her runners into and through occupied territories and were fraught with danger. Her messengers often were given a sprig of the ivy she grew year round in her rooms as a token to present to the recipients of her messages and support. Several ballads have been written about the so-called Ivy Runners, telling of the bravery and resourcefulness they showed, and reminding us that even the greatest walls must, in time, yield to the over-climbing ivy. Perhaps the most famous exploit was that of Pansy, the youngest runner. At the age of eleven, she travelled all the way to where the Duchess of Bearns was in hiding in the Ice Caves of Bearns, to bring her tidings of when and where a supply boat would beach. For part of that journey, Pansy travelled undiscovered amidst the sacks of grain in a wagon commandeered by the Raiders. From the very heart of a Raiders’ camp, she escaped to continue her mission, but only after she had set fire to the tent in which their leader slept in revenge for her Forged parents. Pansy did not live to be thirteen, but her deeds will be long remembered.

      Others aided Patience in disposing of her jewellery and ancestral lands for coin, which she then employed ‘as she pleased, as was her right’ as she once informed Lord Bright. She bought grain and sheep from inland, and again her ‘volunteers’ saw to its transport and distribution. Small supply boats brought hope to embattled defenders. She made token payments to stonemasons and carpenters who helped to rebuild ravaged villages. And she gave coin, not much but accompanied by her sincerest thanks, to those guards who volunteered to assist her.

      By the time the Ivy badge came into common usage among the Buckkeep guard, it was only to acknowledge what was already a fact. These men and women were Lady Patience’s guard, paid by her when they were paid at all, but more important to them, valued and used by her, doctored by her when they were injured, and sharply defended by her acid tongue against any who spoke disparagingly of them. These were the foundation of her influence, and the basis of the strength she came to wield. ‘A tower seldom crumbles from the bottom up,’ she told more than one, and claimed to have the saying from Prince Chivalry.

      We had slept well and our bellies were full. Without the need to hunt, we travelled the whole night. We stayed off the road, and were far more cautious than we had previously been, but no Forged ones did we encounter. A large white moon silvered us a path through the trees. We moved as one creature, scarcely even thinking, save to catalogue the scents we encountered and the sounds we heard. The icy determination that had seized me infected Nighteyes as well. I would not carelessly trumpet to him my intention, but we could think of it without focusing on it. It was a different sort of hunting urge, driven by a different sort of hunger. Each night we walked the miles away beneath the moon’s peering stare.

      There was a soldier’s logic to it, a strategy Verity would have approved. Will knew I lived. I did not know if he would reveal that to the others of the coterie, or even Regal. I suspected he hungered to drain off my Skill-strength as Justin and Serene had drained King Shrewd’s. I suspected there would be an obscene ecstasy to such a theft of power, and that Will would wish to savour it alone. I was also fairly certain that he would search for me, determined to ferret me out no matter where I hid. He knew also that I was terrified of him. He would not expect me to come straight for him, determined to kill not only him and the coterie, but also Regal. My swift march toward Tradeford might be my best strategy for remaining hidden from him.

      Farrow’s reputation is for being as open as Buck is craggy and wooded. That first dawn found us in an unfamiliar type of forest, more open and deciduous. We bedded down for the day in a birch copse on a gentle hill overlooking open pasture. For the first time since the fight I took off my shirt and by daylight examined my shoulder where the club had connected. It was black and blue, and painful if I tried to lift my arm above my head. But that was all. Minor. Three years ago, I would have thought it a serious injury. I would have bathed it in cold water and poulticed it with herbs to hasten its healing. Now, although it purpled my whole shoulder and twinged whenever I moved it, it was only a bruise, and I left it to heal on its own. I smiled wryly to myself as I put my shirt back on.

      Nighteyes was not patient as I looked at the slice in his shoulder. It was starting to close. As I pushed the hair back from the edges of the cut, he reached back suddenly and seized my wrist in his teeth. Not roughly, but firmly.

      Let it alone. It will heal.

      There’s dirt in it.

      He gave it a sniff and a thoughtful lick. Not that much.

      Let me look at it.