The Farseer Series Books 2 and 3: Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest. Robin Hobb
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pointed it aloft in an oath. ‘When we have done with our grieving, we shall make ready to avenge them! Those who have taken our folk shall know our wrath!’ Slowly she lowered her blade, sheathed it cleanly. Again her eyes commanded us. ‘And now, we ride, my folk!’
My flesh stood up in goose-bumps. Around me, men and women were mounting horses and a hunt was forming up. With impeccable timing, Burrich was suddenly beside the wagon, with Softstep saddled and awaiting her rider. I wondered where he had got the black and red harness, the colours of grief and vengeance. I wondered if she had ordered it, or if he had simply known. She stepped down, onto her horse’s back, then settled into the saddle and Softstep stood steady despite the novel mount. She lifted her hand, and it held a sword. The hunt surged forth behind her.
‘Stop her!’ hissed Regal behind me, and I spun to find that both he and Verity stood at my back, completely unnoticed by the crowd.
‘No!’ I dared to breathe aloud. ‘Cannot you feel it? Do not spoil it. She’s given them all something back. I don’t know what it is, but they have been sore missing it for a long time.’
‘It is pride,’ Verity said, his deep voice a rumble. ‘What we have all been missing, and I most of all. There rides a queen,’ he continued in soft amazement. Was there a shade of envy there as well? He turned slowly and went quietly back into the keep. Behind us a babble of voices arose, and folk hastened to do as she had bidden them. I walked behind Verity, near stunned by what I had witnessed. Regal pushed past me, to leap in front of Verity and confront him. He was quivering with outrage. My prince halted.
‘How can you have allowed this to happen? Have you no control over that woman at all? She makes mockery of us! Who is she, to thus issue commands and take out an armed guard from the keep! Who is she, to decree all this so highhandedly?’ Regal’s voice cracked in his fury.
‘My wife,’ Verity said mildly. ‘And your Queen-in-Waiting. The one you chose. Father assured me you would choose a woman worthy to be a queen. I think you picked better than you knew.’
‘Your wife? Your undoing, you ass! She undermines you, she cuts your throat as you sleep! She steals their hearts, she builds her own name! Cannot you see it, you dolt? You may be content to let that mountain vixen steal the crown, but I am not!’
I turned aside hastily and bent to retie my shoe, so I could not witness that Prince Verity struck Prince Regal. I did hear something very like the crack of an open-handed blow to a man’s face and a bitten-off cry of fury. When I looked up, Verity was standing as quietly as before, while Regal hunkered forward with a hand over his nose and mouth. ‘King-in-Waiting Verity will brook no insults to Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Or even to himself. I said my lady had reawakened pride in our soldiers. Perhaps she has stirred mine as well.’ Verity looked mildly surprised as he considered this.
‘The King will hear of this!’ Regal took his hand away from his face, looked aghast at the blood on it. He held it up, shaking, to show Verity. ‘My father will see this blood you have shed!’ he quavered, and choked on the blood coursing from his nose. He leaned forward slightly and held his bloody hand away from himself, so as not to spoil his clothing with a stain.
‘What? You intend to bleed all the way to this afternoon, when our father arises? If you can manage that, come and show me as well!’ To me, ‘Fitz! Have you nothing better to do than stand about gaping? Be off with you. See that my lady’s commands are well obeyed!’
Verity turned and strode off down the corridor. I made haste to obey and to take myself out of Regal’s range. Behind us, he stamped and cursed like a child in the midst of a tantrum. Neither of us turned back to him, but I at least hoped that no servants had marked what had transpired.
It was a long and peculiar day about the keep. Verity made a visit to King Shrewd’s rooms, and then kept himself to his map-room. I know not what Regal did. All folk turned out to do the Queen’s bidding, working swiftly, but almost silently, gossiping quietly amongst themselves as they prepared the one hall for food and the other for bodies. One great change I marked. Those women who had been most faithful to the Queen now found themselves attended, as if they were shadows of Kettricken. And these nobly born women suddenly did not scruple to come themselves to the Lesser Hall, to supervise the preparing of the herb scented water, and the laying out of towels and linens. I myself helped with the fetching of wood for the required pyre.
By late afternoon, the hunt returned. They came quietly, riding in solemn guard around the wagons they escorted. Kettricken rode at their head. She looked tired, and frozen in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. I wanted to go to her, but did not steal the honour as Burrich came to take her horse’s head and assist her dismount. Fresh blood spattered her boots and Softstep’s shoulders. She had not ordered her soldiers to do that which she would not do herself. With a quiet command, Kettricken dismissed the guard to wash themselves, to comb hair and beards, and to return freshly clothed to the hall. As Burrich led Softstep away, Kettricken stood briefly alone. A sadness greyer than anything I had ever felt emanated from her. She was weary. So very weary.
I approached her quietly. ‘If you have need, my lady queen,’ I said softly.
She did not turn. ‘I must do this myself. But be close, in case I need you.’ She spoke so quietly I am sure none heard her but myself. Then she moved forward, and the waiting keep folk parted before her. Heads bobbed as she acknowledged them gravely. She walked silently through the kitchens, nodding at the food she saw prepared, and then paced through the Great Hall, once more nodding approval of all she saw there. In the Lesser Hall, she paused, then removed her gaily knit cap and her jacket, to reveal underneath a simple soft shirt of purple linen. The cap and jacket she gave over to a page, who looked stunned by the honour. She stepped to the head of one of the tables, and began to fold her sleeves back. All movement in the hall ceased as heads turned to watch her. She looked up to our amazed regard. ‘Bring in our dead,’ she said simply.
The pitiful bodies were carried in, a heart-breaking stream of them. I did not count how many. More than I had expected, more than Verity’s reports had led us to believe. I followed behind Kettricken, and carried the basin of warm, scented water as she moved from body to body, and gently bathed each ravaged face and closed tormented eyes forever. Behind us came others, a snaking procession as each body was undressed gently, completely bathed, hair combed, and wound in clean cloth. At some point I became aware that Verity was there, a young scribe beside him, going from body to body, taking down the names of those few who were recognized, writing briefly of every other.
One name I supplied him myself: Kerry. The last Molly and I had known of this street boy, he had gone off as a puppeteer’s apprentice. He’d ended his days as little more than a puppet. His laughing mouth was stilled forever. As boys, we’d run errands together, to earn a penny or two. He’d been beside me the first time I got puking drunk, and laughed until his own stomach betrayed him. He’d wedged the rotten fish in the trestles of the tavern-keeper’s table, the one who had accused us of stealing. The days we had shared I alone would remember now. I suddenly felt less real. Part of my past, Forged away from me.
When we were finished, and stood silently looking at the tables of bodies, Verity stepped forward, to read his tally aloud in the silence. The names were few, but he did not neglect those unknown. ‘A young man, newly bearded, dark hair, the scars of fishing on his hands …’ he said of one, and of another, ‘A woman, curly haired and comely, tattooed with the puppeteers’ guild sign.’ We listened to the litany of those we had lost, and if any did not weep, they had hearts of stone. As a people, we lifted our dead and carried them to the funeral pyre, to set them carefully upon this last bed. Verity himself brought the torch for the kindling, but he handed it to the Queen who waited beside the pyre. As she set flame to the pitch-laden boughs, she cried out to the dark skies, ‘You shall not be forgotten!’ All echoed her with a shout. Blade, the old sergeant, stood beside the pyre with shears, to take from every soldier a finger’s length lock of hair, a symbol of the mourning for a fallen comrade. Verity joined the queue, and Kettricken stood behind him, to offer up a pale lock of her own hair.
There followed a night such as I had never known. Most of Buckkeep Town came to the keep that night, and were admitted