Robin Hobb: Renegade's Magic

On the road ahead of me, I saw what I’d been dreading. A horseman was coming toward me at a weary walk. The rider sat tall in his saddle, and that as much as the brave green of his jacket labeled him a cavalla soldier. I wondered where he was coming from and why he rode alone and if I’d have to kill him. As I drew closer, the rakish angle of his hat and the bright yellow scarf at his throat betrayed what he was: one of our scouts. My heart lifted a trifle. There was a chance he’d know nothing about the charges against me and my trial. The scouts were often out for weeks at a time. He showed no interest in me as our horses approached one another, and as I passed him, he did not even lift a hand in greeting.

I felt a pang of sharp regret as I went by. But for the magic, that could have been me. I recognized Tiber from the Cavalla Academy, but he did not know me. The magic had changed me from the slim and fit cadet I’d been. The fat, disheveled trooper lolloping along on his ungainly mount was beneath the lieutenant’s notice. At his current pace, it would be hours before he got to the town and heard that the mob had killed me in the streets. I wondered if he’d think he had seen a ghost.

Clove cantered laboriously on. The crossbred draft horse was no one’s idea of a mount built for either speed or endurance. But he was big, and for a man of my height and bulk, he was the only possible steed that could carry me comfortably. It came to me that this would be the last time I’d ride him; I couldn’t take him into the forest with me. Pain gouged me again; he’d be one more beloved thing that I’d have to leave behind. He was running heavily now, nearly spent by our mad flight from Gettys.

Well outside Gettys, a wagon trail diverged from the King’s Road and led up to the cemetery. Clove slowed as we approached it, and I abruptly changed my plans. The cabin I had called home for the past year was up that trail. Was there anything left there that I’d want to carry forward into my new life? Spink had removed my soldier-son journal and taken it to his home. I was grateful for that. My journal held the full tale of how the magic had entered my life and slowly taken it away from me. There might still be letters in my cabin, papers that could connect me to a past and a family that I needed to abandon. I would let nothing tie me to either Lord Burvelle, neither my uncle nor my father. Let my death shame no one except myself.

Clove slipped into his ponderous trot as he labored up the hill. It had been only a couple of weeks since I’d last been here, but it felt like years. Grass was already sprouting on the many graves we had dug for the summer victims of the plague. The trench graves were still bare soil; they had been the last graves to be covered, when the plague was at its height and we grave diggers could no longer keep up with the steady influx of bodies. They would be the last scars to heal.

I pulled Clove in outside my cabin. I dismounted cautiously, but felt a mere twinge of pain. Only yesterday the leg irons had cut into my tendons; the magic was healing me at a prodigious rate. My horse blew at me, shuddered his coat, and then walked a few steps before dropping his head to graze. I hurried to my door. I’d quickly destroy any evidence of my former identity and then be on my way.

The window shutters were closed. I shut the door behind me as I stepped into the cabin. Then I recoiled in dismay as Kesey sat up in my bed. My fellow grave digger had been sleeping with a stocking cap on his bald head to keep the night chill away. He knuckled his eyes and gaped at me, his hanging jaw revealing gaps in his teeth. “Nevare?” he protested. “I thought you were going to—”

His words fumbled to a halt as he realized exactly how wrong it was for me to be standing in my cabin.

“Hang today,” I finished the sentence for him. “Yes. A lot of people thought that.”

He stared at me, puzzled, but continued to sit in the bed. I decided he was no threat to me. We’d been friends for most of a year before everything went wrong. I hoped he would not judge it his duty to interfere with my escape. Casually, I walked past him to the shelf where I’d kept my personal possessions. As Spink had promised, my soldier-son journal was gone. A wave of relief washed through me. Epiny and Spink would know best how to dispose of those incriminating and accusatory pages. I felt along the shelf to be sure that no letter or scrap of paper had been missed. No. But my sling was there, the leather straps wrapped around the cup. I put it in my pocket. It might be useful.

The disreputable long gun I’d been issued when I first arrived at Gettys still rested on its rack. The rattly weapon with the pitted barrel had never been reliable. Even if it had been sound, it would soon have been useless when I’d expended the small supply of powder and ball I had. Leave it. But my sword was another matter. The sheathed blade still hung from its hook. I was reaching for it when Kesey demanded, “What happened?”

“It’s a long story. Are you sure you want to know?”

“Well, of course I do! I thought you were going to be lashed to pieces and then hanged today!”

I found myself grinning. “And you couldn’t even get out of bed to come to my hanging. A fine friend you are!”

He smiled back uncertainly. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but I welcomed it. “I didn’t want to see it, Nevare. Couldn’t face it. Bad enough that the new commander ordered me to live out here and keep an eye on the cemetery because you were in prison. Worse to watch a friend die, and know that I’d probably meet my own end out here. Every cemetery sentry we’ve ever had has met a bad end. But how’d you get out of it? I don’t understand.”

“I escaped, Kesey. Speck magic freed me. The roots of a tree tore the stone walls of my dungeon apart, and I crawled out through the opening. I nearly made it out of Gettys. I made it past the gates of the fort. I thought I was a free man. But then I met a troop of soldiers coming back from the road’s end. And who should be in charge of them but Captain Thayer himself.”

Kesey was spellbound, his eyes as round as bowls. “But it was his wife—” he began, and I nodded.

“They found Carsina’s body in my bed. You know, if not for that, I think the judges might have realized there was very little to link me to Fala’s death. But Carsina’s body in my bed was just too much for them. I doubt that even one ever considered that I might have been trying to save her.

“You do know I didn’t do any of those things, don’t you, Kesey?”

The older man licked his lips. He looked uncertain. “I didn’t want to believe any of that about you, Nevare. None of it fit with anything Ebrooks and I had ever seen of you. You were fat and a loner and hardly ever had a drink with us, and Ebrooks and I could see you were sliding toward the Speck way. You wouldn’t have been the first to go native.

“But we never saw nothing mean in you. You weren’t vicious. When you talked soldiering with us, seemed like you meant it. And no one ever worked harder out here than you did. But someone did those things, and there you were, right where they happened. Everybody else seemed so certain. They made me feel a fool for not believing you done it. And at the trial, when I tried to say that you’d always been a stand-up fellow to me, well, Ebrooks shoved me and told me to shut up. Told me I’d only get myself a beating trying to speak up for you, and do you no good at all. So, I kept quiet. I’m sorry, Nevare. You deserved better.”

I gritted my teeth and then let my anger go with a sigh. “It’s all right, Kesey. Ebrooks was right. You couldn’t have helped me.”

I reached for my sword. But as my hand came close to the hilt, I felt an odd tingling. It was an unpleasant warning, as if I’d just set my hand on a hive of bees and felt the buzzing of the warriors inside. I drew my hand back and wiped it roughly down the front of my shirt, puzzled.