Assassin’s Quest. Робин Хобб

no money to buy more supplies, and nothing left to sell off.’ He said it flatly, as if it were my fault. He was sitting by the fire. He folded his two hands together and clasped them between his knees. They had been shaking, just a little. ‘We’re going to have to manage on our own now. There’s game in plenty to be had. If we can’t feed ourselves up here, we deserve to starve.’

      ‘Are you going to be all right?’ I asked flatly.

      He looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Meaning what?’ he asked.

      ‘Meaning there’s no more brandy,’ I said as bluntly.

      ‘And you think I can’t get by without it?’ His temper was rising already. It had become increasingly short since the brandy ran out.

      I gave a very small shrug. ‘I was asking. That’s all.’ I sat very still, not looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t explode.

      After a pause, he said, very quietly, ‘Well, I suppose that’s something we’ll both have to find out.’

      I let a long time pass. Finally I asked, ‘What are we going to do?’

      He looked at me with annoyance. ‘I told you. Hunt to feed ourselves. That’s something you should be able to grasp.’

      I looked away from him, gave a bobbing nod. ‘I understood. I mean … past that. Past tomorrow.’

      ‘Well. We’ll hunt for our meat. We can get by for a bit that way. But sooner or later, we’ll want what we can’t get nor make for ourselves. Some Chade will get for us, if he can. Buckkeep is as picked over as bare bones now. I’ll have to go to Buckkeep Town, for a while, and hire out if I can. But for now …’

      ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I meant … we can’t always hide up here, Burrich. What comes after that?’

      It was his turn to be quiet a while. ‘I suppose I hadn’t given it much thought. At first it was just a place to take you while you recovered. Then, for a time, it seemed as if you’d never …’

      ‘But I’m here, now.’ I hesitated. ‘Patience,’ I began.

      ‘Believes you dead,’ Burrich cut in, perhaps more harshly than he’d intended. ‘Chade and I are the only ones who know different. Before we pulled you from that coffin, we weren’t sure. Had the dose been too strong, would you be really dead from it, or frozen from your days in the earth? I’d seen what they’d done to you.’ He stopped, and for a moment stared at me. He looked haunted. He gave his head a tiny shake. ‘I didn’t think you could live through that, let alone the poison. So we offered no hope to anyone. And then, when we had you out …’ He shook his head, more violently. ‘At first, you were so battered. What they’d done to you – there was just so much damage … I don’t know what possessed Patience to clean and bind a dead man’s wounds, but if she hadn’t … Then later … it was not you. After those first few weeks, I was sickened at what we had done. Put a wolf’s soul in a man’s body, it seemed to me.’

      He looked at me again, his face going incredulous at the memory. ‘You went for my throat. The first day you could stand on your own, you wanted to run away. I wouldn’t let you and you went for my throat. I could not show Patience that snarling, snapping creature, let alone …’

      ‘Do you think Molly … ?’ I began.

      Burrich looked away from me. ‘Probably she heard you died.’ After a time, he added, uncomfortably, ‘Someone had burned a candle on your grave. The snow had been pushed away, and the wax stump was there still when I came to dig you up.’

      ‘Like a dog after a bone.’

      ‘I was fearful you would not understand it.’

      ‘I did not. I just took Nighteyes’ word for it.’

      It was as much as I could handle, just then. I tried to let the conversation die. But Burrich was relentless. ‘If you went back to Buckkeep, or Buckkeep Town, they would kill you. They’d hang you over water and burn your body. Or dismember it. But folk would be sure you stayed dead this time.’

      ‘Did they hate me so?’

      ‘Hate you? No. They liked you well enough, those that knew you. But if you came back, a man who had died and been buried, again walking among them, they’d fear you. It’s not a thing you could explain away as a trick. The Wit is not a magic that is well thought of. When a man is accused of it and then dies and is buried, well, in order for them to remember you fondly, you’d have to stay dead. If they saw you walking about, they’d take it as proof that Regal was right; that you were practising Beast magic, and used it to kill the King. They’d have to kill you again. More thoroughly the second time.’ Burrich stood suddenly, and paced the room twice. ‘Damn me, but I could use a drink,’ he said.

      ‘Me, too,’ I said quietly.

      Ten days later, Chade came up the path. The old assassin walked slowly, with a staff, and he carried his pack up high on his shoulders. The day was warm, and he had thrown back the hood of his cloak. His long grey hair blew in the wind and he had let his beard grow to cover more of his face. At first glance, he looked to be an itinerant tinker. A scarred old man, perhaps, but no longer the Pocked Man. Wind and sun had weathered his face. Burrich had gone fishing, a thing he preferred to do alone. Nighteyes had come to sun himself on our doorstep in Burrich’s absence, but had melted back into the woods behind the hut at the first waft of Chade’s scent on the air. I stood alone.

      For a time I watched him come. The winter had aged him, in the lines of his face and the grey of his hair. But he walked more strongly than I remembered, as if privation had toughened him. At last I went to meet him, feeling strangely shy and embarrassed. When he looked up and saw me, he halted and stood in the trail. I continued toward him. ‘Boy?’ he asked cautiously when I was near. I managed a nod and a smile. The answering smile that broke forth on his face humbled me. He dropped his staff to hug me, and then pressed his cheek to mine as if I were a child. ‘Oh, Fitz, Fitz, my boy,’ he said in a voice full of relief. ‘I thought we had lost you. I thought we’d done something worse than let you die.’ His old arms were tight and strong about me.

      I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him that they had.

TWO The Parting

      After crowning himself King of the Six Duchies, Prince Regal Farseer essentially abandoned the Coastal Duchies to their own devices. He had stripped Buckkeep itself and a good part of Buck Duchy of as much coin as he could wring from it. From Buckkeep, horses and stock had been sold off, with the very best taken inland to Regal’s new residence at Tradeford. The furnishings and library of the traditional royal seat had been plundered as well, some to feather the new nest, some divvied out to his Inland dukes and nobles as favours or sold outright to them. Grain warehouses, winecellars, the armouries, all had been plundered and the loot carried off inland.

      His announced plan had been to move the ailing King Shrewd, and the widowed and pregnant Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken inland to Tradeford, that they might be safer from the Red Ship raids that plagued the Coastal Duchies. This, too, was the excuse for the looting of furnishings and valuables from Buckkeep. But with the death of Shrewd and the disappearance of Kettricken, even this flimsy reason vanished. Nonetheless he left Buckkeep as soon after his coronation as he could. The tale has been told that when his Council of Nobles questioned his decision, he told them that the Coastal Duchies represented only war and expense to him, that they had always been a leech upon the resources of the Inland Duchies and he wished the Outislanders the joy of taking such a rocky and cheerless place. Regal was later to deny having ever uttered such words.

      When Kettricken vanished, King Regal was left in a position for which there was no historical precedent. The child Kettricken carried had obviously been next in line for the crown. But both Queen and unborn child had vanished, under very suspicious circumstances. Not all were certain that Regal himself had not engineered it. Even if the Queen