Robin Hobb - Fool's Assassin

Then Riddle dropped senseless into the snow beside me. He fell with terrible limpness, collapsing as if he had not a bone in his body. I held fast to the Fool as I dropped to one knee beside him. “Riddle? Riddle!” I called stupidly, as if he had only forgotten I was there and decided to fall on his face. I let the Fool’s legs drop to the snowy ground as I caught at the shoulder of Riddle’s shirt and tried to turn him faceup. He did not respond to my voice or my touch. “Riddle!” I shouted again, and with great relief I heard an answering shout from down the hill.

I turned and looked behind me. A boy carrying a torch waded through the snow. Behind him, a team labored to draw a sledge up the steep hill. By the wavering torchlight, I saw steam rising from their coats. A girl rode a horse behind them, and then the girl was suddenly Nettle, and at my shout she urged her mount to surge through the deep snow and pass the trudging team. She reached us before anyone else and flung herself from her horse and into the snow beside Riddle. As she put her arms around him and lifted him so that his head rested on her breast, she answered any questions I might ever have had about what he meant to her. Even in the fading light of the day, the flash of anger in her eyes was sharp as she demanded, “What did you do to him?”

I answered honestly. “I used him. And in my inexperience, more ruthlessly than I meant to, I fear. I, I thought he would stop me if I took too much.” I felt like a stammering boy before her deep cold anger. I bit back my useless apology. “Let us get them both onto the sled and back to the keep and summon healers and the King’s Coterie. Later, you can say or do whatever you wish to me.”

“I shall,” she warned me heartily, and then lifted her voice, giving commands. Guards rushed to obey her, several of them exclaiming in dismay as they recognized Riddle. I trusted none of them with the Fool but carried him myself to the sled, loaded him, and clambered up afterward to sit beside him.

The snow was slightly packed, and the big horses made better time going down the hill than they had coming up. Even so, it seemed an eternity in the dark and cold as we approached the lighted towers of Buckkeep Castle. Nettle had given her horse over to someone else; she rode with Riddle, and if their relationship had been a secret, it was no longer. She spoke softly and urgently to him, and when he finally stirred and managed a feeble response she bent over him to deliver a heartfelt kiss.

The sled did not even pause at the gates, but took us directly to the infirmary. The healers were waiting for us. I did not object as they took Riddle first, and again I carried the Fool myself. Nettle dismissed the guards and promised them news as soon as there was any. The room was long with a low ceiling and blessedly empty of other occupants. I wondered if it was the same room where I had once recovered from my Skill-pillar mishap. There were rows of cots, not so different from a barracks. Riddle had already been stretched out on a bed, and I was horribly relieved to hear him weakly protesting at being there. I set the Fool down carefully on a bed two cots away, knowing well that Nettle would need space from me for some time. And Riddle, I thought glumly. I did not think I’d done permanent damage to him, but in my ignorance and my anxiety for the Fool, I had completely forgotten to have a care for how much of his strength I took. I’d used him roughly and I would deserve his anger. I was baffled by it. Had I needed that much from him to bring the Fool through the pillar?

At Nettle’s command, the healers had clustered around his bed. I was alone with the Fool as I stripped away his outer garments and let them fall in a smelly heap by his cot. What was revealed horrified me. Someone had given great attention to inflicting pain on him. Great care and a good amount of time had been devoted to it, I judged, for here were bones with the old breaks badly healed and gashes that had been hastily or perhaps deliberately badly bandaged, so that crooked ridges of scar tissue had formed where flesh had been unevenly pushed back together. A pattern of burn scars on his left upper arm might have been a word, but in no alphabet or language that I knew. His left foot was scarcely worthy of that name. It twisted in, a lump of flesh with knobs of bone, and the toes gone dusky.

The grime was as distressing as the damage. The Fool had always been a clean man, meticulous about his garments, his hair, and his body. Dirt was ground into his skin, patterned where rain had fallen on him. Some of his clothing was so stiff with dirt that I expected it to crack as I peeled it away. He had an apple hidden in his jerkin. I let it fall to the floor with the rest. Rather than move him too much, I drew my sheath knife, cut away the worn fabric, and tugged it gently from beneath him.

The smell was nauseating. His eyes were open to cracks and I judged him to be awake, but he did not move until I tried to remove his undergarment. Then he lifted both scarred hands to the neck of the dingy linen singlet and gripped the collar. “No,” he said faintly.

“Fool,” I rebuked him, and tried to push his hands aside, but he gripped his garment more tightly and with greater strength than I had expected to encounter. “Please,” I said softly, but he slowly shook his tattered head against the pillow. Pieces of his matted hair broke off when he did so, and I did not have the heart to challenge him. Let him take his secrets to the grave then, if that was what he wished. I would not disrobe him in front of the healers. I drew a clean woolen blanket over him. He sighed in relief.

A healer appeared at my elbow. “How was he injured? Is he bleeding?” She was doing her best to control her distaste, but even I could barely abide his smell.

“He has been tortured, and has journeyed far in great privation. Please, bring me warm water and some cloths. Let me clean him up a bit while you find him a good beef broth.”

I saw her swallow. “As an apprentice, the first cleaning of an injured man is one of my tasks.”

“As his friend, it’s my task. Please.”

She struggled to conceal her relief. “May I remove these rags?” she asked, and I nodded. She folded her lips, stooped to pick them up, and then hastened away with them.

As she went out the door at the end of the room, Chade came in. He was dressed very finely, in several shades of green, and I knew he had made some excuse to leave the gathering. Thick was with him in Buckkeep livery, and a woman I didn’t recognize. Perhaps she was a Skill-apprentice. A moment later a guardsman opened the door and King Dutiful appeared with Kettricken but a step behind him. All motion in the room ceased. The erstwhile Queen waved an impatient hand and strode past Chade. She halted at Riddle’s bedside. “Riddle was injured as well? I was not told of this!”

Nettle stood. Her jaw was set. Her voice was respectful when she managed to speak. “My lady, I suggest that a private Skill-healing would be the best choice for both of these men. May I dismiss the healers?”

The apprentice had just reappeared with a bucket of steaming water and several clean cloths over her shoulder. She looked about doubtfully, but I took the liberty of waving her in. She managed an awkward curtsy as she passed King Dutiful without spilling her bucket and then hurried to my side. She set the bucket down and put the folded cloths tidily across the foot of the bed. Then she looked from me to the gathering of royalty in the infirmary. It was clearly an event she had never experienced before, and she was torn between curtsying and getting on with her work.

“My King, if it please you, this is my place of both experience and expertise.” The man speaking must have been the healing master. I could not tell if he objected to being dismissed because he believed he was most competent to do the required work or if he merely disliked someone usurping his place. I found I did not care, and found also that court niceties meant nothing to me. Let the healer argue with Nettle’s request all he wished; I thought I knew how it would be settled. I gestured the apprentice away, and she stepped back gratefully. I ignored their genteel dispute as I set to work.