The Complete Farseer Trilogy: Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin’s Quest. Robin Hobb
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I realized suddenly that I had never recounted to Chade the Fitz-fits-fats riddle. It seemed too complicated to go into just then. ‘Oh, just odd things. About two months ago, he stopped me and said the morrow was a poor day to hunt. But it was fine and clear. Burrich got that big buck that day. You remember. It was the same day that we came upon a wolverine. It tore up two of the dogs badly.’
‘As I recall, it nearly got you.’ Chade leaned forward, an oddly pleased look on his face.
I shrugged. ‘Burrich rode it down. And then he cursed me down as if it were my fault, and told me that he’d have knocked me silly if the beast had hurt Sooty. As if I could have known it would turn on me.’ I hesitated. ‘Chade, I know the Fool is strange. But I like it when he comes to talk to me. He speaks in riddles, and he insults me, and makes fun of me, and gives himself leave to tell me things he thinks I should do, like wash my hair, or not wear yellow. But.’
‘Yes?’ Chade prodded as if what I was saying were very important.
‘I like him,’ I said lamely. ‘He mocks me, but from him, it seems a kindness. He makes me feel, well, important. That he could choose me to talk to.’
Chade leaned back. He put his hand up to his mouth to cover a smile, but it was a joke I didn’t understand. ‘Trust your instincts,’ he told me succinctly. ‘And keep any counsels the Fool gives you. And, as you have, keep it private that he comes and speaks to you. Some could take it amiss.’
‘Who?’ I demanded.
‘King Shrewd, perhaps. After all, the Fool is his. Bought and paid for.’
A dozen questions rose to my mind. Chade saw the expression on my face, for he held up a quelling hand. ‘Not now. That’s as much as you need to know right now. In fact, more than you need to know. But I was surprised by your revelation. It’s not like me to tell secrets not my own. If the Fool wants you to know more, he can speak for himself. But, I seem to recall we were discussing Galen.’
I sank back in my chair with a sigh. ‘Galen. So he is unpleasant to those who cannot challenge it, dresses well and eats alone. What else do I need to know, Chade? I’ve had strict teachers, and I’ve had unpleasant ones. I think I’ll learn to deal with him.’
‘You’d better.’ Chade was deadly earnest. ‘Because he hates you. He hates you more than he loved your father. The depth of emotion he felt for your father unnerved me. No man, not even a prince, merits such blind devotion, especially not so suddenly. And you he hates, with even more intensity. It frightens me.’
Something in Chade’s tone brought a sick chill stalking up from my stomach. I felt an uneasiness that almost made me sick. ‘How do you know?’ I demanded.
‘Because he told Shrewd so when Shrewd directed him to include you among his pupils. “Does not this bastard have to learn his place? Does he not have to be content with what you have decreed for him?” Then he refused to teach you.’
‘He refused?’
‘I told you. But Shrewd was adamant. And he is King, and Galen must obey him now, for all that he was a Queen’s man. So Galen relented and said he would attempt to teach you. You will meet with him each day. Beginning a month from now. You are Patience’s until then.’
‘Where?’
‘There is a tower top, called the Queen’s Garden. You will be admitted there.’ Chade paused, as if wanting to warn me, but not wishing to scare me. ‘Be careful,’ he said at last, ‘for within the walls of the Garden, I have no influence. I am blind there.’
It was a strange warning, and one I took to heart.
The Lady Patience established her eccentricity at an early age. As a small child, her nursemaids found her stubbornly independent, and yet lacking the common sense to take care of herself. One remarked, ‘She would go all day with her laces undone because she could not tie them herself, yet would suffer no one to tie them for her.’ Before the age of ten, she had decided to eschew the traditional trainings befitting a girl of her rank, and instead interested herself in handicrafts that were very unlikely to prove useful: pottery, tattooing, the making of perfumes, and the growing and propagation of plants, especially foreign ones.
She did not scruple to absent herself for long hours from supervision. She preferred the woodlands and orchards to her mother’s courtyards and gardens. One would have thought this would produce a hardy and practical child. Nothing could be further from the truth. She seemed to be constantly afflicted with rashes, scrapes and stings, was frequently lost, and never developed any sensible wariness toward man or beast.
Her education came largely from herself. She mastered reading and ciphering at an early age, and from that time studied any scroll, book or tablet that came her way with avaricious and indiscriminate interest. Tutors were frustrated by her distractable ways and frequent absences that seemed to affect not at all her ability to learn almost anything swiftly and well. Yet the application of such knowledge interested her not at all. Her head was full of fancies and imaginings, she substituted poetry and music for logic and manners, she expressed no interest at all in social introductions and coquettish skills.
And yet she married a prince, one who had courted her with a single-minded enthusiasm that was to be the first scandal to befall him.
‘Stand up straight!’
I stiffened.
‘Not like that! You look like a turkey, drawn out and waiting for the axe. Relax more. No, put your shoulders back, don’t hunch them. Do you always stand with your feet thrown out so?’
‘Lady, he is only a boy. They are always so, all angles and bones. Let him come in and be at ease.’
‘Oh, very well. Come in, then.’
I nodded my gratitude to a round-faced serving-woman who dimpled a smile at me in return. She gestured me toward a pewbench so bedecked with pillows and shawls that there was scarcely room left to sit. I perched on the edge of it and surveyed Lady Patience’s chamber.
It was worse than Chade’s. I would have thought it the clutter of years if I had not known that she had only recently arrived. Even a complete inventory of the room could not have described it, for it was the juxtaposition of objects that made them remarkable. A feather fan, a fencing glove and a bundle of cattails were all vased in a well-worn boot. A small black terrier with two fat puppies slept in a basket lined with a fur hood and some woollen stockings. A family of carved-ivory walruses perched on a tablet about horse-shoeing. But the dominant elements were the plants. There were fat puffs of greenery overflowing clay pots, teacups and goblets, and buckets of cuttings and cut-flowers, and vines spilling out of handleless mugs and cracked cups. Failures were evident in bare sticks poking up out of pots of earth. The plants perched and huddled together in every location that would catch morning or afternoon sun from the windows. The effect was like a garden spilling in the windows and growing up around the clutter in the room.
‘He’s probably hungry, too, isn’t he, Lacey? I’ve heard that about boys. I think there’s some cheese and biscuits on the stand by my bed. Fetch them for him, would you, dear?’
Lady Patience stood slightly more than arm’s distance away from me as she spoke past me to her lady.
‘I’m not hungry, really, thank you,’ I blurted out before Lacey could lumber to her feet. ‘I’m here because I was told … to make myself available to you, in the mornings, for as long as you wanted me.’
That was a careful rephrasing. What King Shrewd had actually said to me was, ‘Go to her chambers each morning, and do whatever it is she thinks you ought to be doing so that she leaves me alone. And keep doing