Fool’s Assassin. Робин Хобб

I must, as Holder Badgerlock, a minor officer in Kettricken’s guard. Chade insisted, Kettricken requested, Dutiful all but ordered me, and Nettle pleaded. I packed my kit and chose a mount.

      Over the year, Molly’s obsession had ground me down to a weary acceptance. I was not surprised when she declined to accompany me as she felt her ‘time was very close now’. A part of me did not wish to leave her when her mind was so unsettled, and another part of me longed for a respite from indulging her delusion. I called Revel aside and asked that he pay special attention to her requests while I was gone. He looked almost offended that I thought such a command necessary. ‘As ever, sir,’ he said, and added his stiff little bow that meant, ‘you idiot.’

      And so I left her and rode away from Withywoods alone and quietly joined the procession of noble folk from the Six Duchies going north to the Mountains for the funeral rites. It was passing strange for me to relive a journey I had once made when I was not yet twenty, and had travelled to the Mountain Kingdom to claim Kettricken as bride for King-in-Waiting Verity. In my second journey to the Mountains, I had often avoided the roads and travelled cross-country with my wolf.

      I had known that Buck had changed. Now I saw that the changes had happened all through the Six Duchies. The roads were wider than I recalled, and the lands more settled. Fields of grain grew where there had once been open pasturage. Towns sprawled along the road, so that sometimes it seemed one scarcely ended before the next began. There were more inns and towns along the way, though the size of our party sometimes overwhelmed the accommodations. The wild lands were being tamed, brought under the plough and fenced for pasture. I wondered where the wolves hunted now.

      As one of Kettricken’s guardsmen, clad in her white and purple, I rode close to the royal party. Kettricken had never been one to stand upon formality, and her request that I ride at her stirrup was simply accepted by those who knew her. We spoke quietly, the jingling and clopping of the other travellers granting us a strange privacy. I told her stories of my first journey to the Mountains. She spoke of her childhood and of Eyod, not as king but as her loving father. I said nothing of Molly’s disorder to Kettricken. Her sorrow at the death of her father was enough for her to bear.

      My position as a member of her guard meant that I was accommodated at the same inns where Kettricken stayed. Often that meant that Nettle was there as well, and sometimes we were able to find a quiet place and time for conversation. It was good to see her and a relief to discuss frankly with her how her mother’s illusion persisted. When Steady joined us, we were not as blunt, but that was Nettle’s choice of reticence. I could not decide if she thought her younger brother was too young for such tidings or if she thought it too much of a woman’s matter. Burrich had named his son well. Of all his boys, Steady wore most of Burrich’s features and his sturdy build, and shared too his deliberate way of moving and unflinching values for both honour and duty. When he was with us, it was as if his father sat at the table. I marked Nettle’s easy dependence on her brother’s strength, and not just for the Skill. I was glad he was so often at her side, and yet wistful. I wished he could have been my son, even as I was glad to see his father live on in him. I think he sensed how I felt. He was deferential to me, and yet there were times when his black eyes bore into mine as if he could see my soul. And at those times, I missed Burrich with a cutting sorrow.

      In more private times, Nettle shared with me her mother’s monthly letters detailing the progress of a pregnancy that had now seemingly stretched over two years. It broke my heart to hear Molly’s words as Nettle read aloud of her mulling of names, and progress on her sewing projects for a baby that would never exist. Yet neither one of us had any solution other than to take a small comfort in the sharing of our worry.

      When we arrived in the Mountains, we were given a warm welcome. The bright structures that made up Jhaampe, the Mountain capital, still reminded me of the bells of flowers. The older structures were as I recalled them, incorporating the trees they were built among. But even to the Mountains change had come, and the outskirts of that city were more like the towns of Farrow and Tilth, buildings of stone and plank. It made me sad for I felt that the change was not a good one, as if such structures were a canker growing over the forest.

      For three days we mourned a king whom I had respected deeply, not with wild wailing and oceans of tears, but with quietly shared stories of who he had been and how well he had ruled. His people grieved for their fallen king but in equal measure they welcomed his daughter home. They were happy to see King Dutiful and the Narcheska and the two princes. Several times I heard people mention with quiet pride that young Integrity greatly resembled Kettricken’s brother and his late uncle, Prince Rurisk. I had not seen that resemblance until I heard it spoken, and then I could not forget it.

      At the end of the time of mourning, Kettricken stood before them and reminded them that her father and King-in-Waiting Chivalry had begun the process of peace between the Six Duchies and the Mountains. She spoke of how wisely they had secured that peace with her marriage to Verity. She asked that they look at her son King Dutiful as their future monarch and recall that the peace they now enjoyed should be viewed as King Eyod’s greatest triumph.

      With the formalities of King Eyod’s funeral over, the true work of the visit commenced. Daily there were meetings with Eyod’s advisors, and there were lengthy discussions on the orderly handing over of the governance of the Mountains. I was present for some of it, sometimes standing at the side of the room, as Chade and Dutiful’s extra eyes and ears, and sometimes sitting outside in the sun, my eyes closed but Skill-linked to both of them in the higher-level meetings. But in the evenings, I was sometimes released to have time on my own.

      And so it was that I found myself standing outside an elaborately carved and painted door, looking wistfully at the work of the Fool’s hands. Here was the house where he had lived when he thought he had failed to fulfil his fate as the White Prophet. On the night King Shrewd had died, Kettricken had fled Buckkeep and the Fool had gone with her. Together they had made the arduous journey to the Mountain Kingdom where she believed she and her unborn child would be safe in her father’s home. But there fate had dealt the Fool two blows. Kettricken’s child did not live, and news of my death in Regal’s dungeons reached him. He had failed in his quest to ensure there was an heir to the Farseer line. He had failed in his quest to bring about his prophecy. His life as a White Prophet was over.

      When he believed me dead, he had stayed in the Mountains with Kettricken, lived in this small house and tried to make a little life for himself as a wood carver and toy maker. Then he had found me, broken and dying, and brought me here to the dwelling he shared with Jofron. When he took me in, she had moved out. When I was recovered, the Fool and I accompanied Kettricken on a hopeless quest to follow her husband’s cold trail into the mountains. The Fool had left the little house and all his tools for Jofron. By the colourfully-painted marionettes dangling in the window, I suspected she still lived there and still made toys.

      I did not knock on the door but stood in the long summer evening and studied the carved imps and pecksies that frolicked on the trim of the shutters. Like many of the old-fashioned Mountain dwellings, this structure was painted with bright colours and details as if it were a child’s treasure box. An emptied treasure box, my friend long gone from it.

      The door opened and yellow lamplight spilled out. A tall, pale lad of about fifteen, fair hair falling to his shoulders, stood framed there. ‘Stranger, if you seek shelter, you need but knock and ask. You are in the Mountains now.’ He smiled as he spoke and opened wide the door, stepping aside to gesture me in.

      I walked slowly toward him. His features were vaguely familiar. ‘Does Jofron still live here?’

      His smiled widened. ‘Lives and works. Grandmother, you have a visitor!’

      I moved slowly into the room. She sat at a workbench by the window, a lamp at her elbow. She was painting something with a small brush, even strokes of goldenrod yellow. ‘A moment,’ she begged without looking up from her task. ‘If I let this dry between strokes, the colour will be uneven.’

      I said nothing but stood and waited. Jofron’s long blonde hair was streaked with silver now. Four braids trapped it away from her face. The cuffs of a brightly-embroidered blouse were folded back to her elbows. Her arms were sinewy and flecked