Robin Hobb: Assassin’s Fate

Harper Voyager

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2017

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2017

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007444250

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780007444267

Version: 2018-09-24

To Fitz and the Fool.

My best friends for over twenty years.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Prologue

Chapter One: Bee Stings

Chapter Two: The Silver Touch

Chapter Three: In the Mountains

Chapter Four: Chalced

Chapter Five: The Bargain

Chapter Six: Revelations

Chapter Seven: Beggar

Chapter Eight: Tintaglia

Chapter Nine: The Tarman

Chapter Ten: Bee’s Book

Chapter Eleven: Passage

Chapter Twelve: The Liveship Paragon

Chapter Thirteen: Full Sails

Chapter Fourteen: Paragon’s Bargain

Chapter Fifteen: Trader Akriel

Chapter Sixteen: The Pirate Isles

Chapter Seventeen: Serpent Spit

Chapter Eighteen: Silver Ships and Dragons

Chapter Nineteen: Another Ship, Another Journey

Chapter Twenty: Belief

Chapter Twenty-One: Under Sail

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Butterfly Cloak

Chapter Twenty-Three: Clerres

Chapter Twenty-Four: Hand and Foot

Chapter Twenty-Five: Bribes

Chapter Twenty-Six: Silver Secrets

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Feather to Blade

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Unsafe Harbour

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Accusations

Chapter Thirty: Barriers and a Black Banner

Chapter Thirty-One: The Butterfly Man

Chapter Thirty-Two: A Way In

Chapter Thirty-Three: Candles

Chapter Thirty-Four: Smoke

Chapter Thirty-Five: Confrontations

Chapter Thirty-Six: Surprises

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Touch

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Ship of Dragons

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Vengeance

Chapter Forty: Warm Water

Chapter Forty-One: Vivacia’s Voyage

Chapter Forty-Two: Furnich

Chapter Forty-Three: Bingtown

Chapter Forty-Four: Up the River

Chapter Forty-Five: A Princess of the Farseers

Chapter Forty-Six: The Quarry

Chapter Forty-Seven: A Wolf’s Heart

Chapter Forty-Eight: Time

Chapter Forty-Nine: Lies and Truths

Chapter Fifty: The Mountains

Also by Robin Hobb

About the Publisher

There are children holding hands in a circle. In the middle, a single child stands. The child wears a blindfold but there are painted eyes on the blindfold. The eyes are black and staring, edged with red. The child in the middle turns in a circle, hands outstretched. All the other children dance in a wider circle around her. They sing a song.

‘As long as the circle holds

The futures can be foretold.

You must be hard of heart

To tear the circle apart.’

It looks like a merry game. Each child in the outer circle shouts a sentence or a phrase. I cannot hear what they are saying, but the blinded child can. She begins to shout back at them, her words torn by a slowly rising wind. ‘Burn it all.’ ‘The dragons fall’. ‘The sea will rise.’ ‘The jewel strewn skies.’ ‘One comes as two’. ‘The four shall rue.’ ‘Two come as one.’ ‘Your reign is done!’ ‘Forfeit all lives.’ ‘No one survives!’

At that last shout, a wind bursts from the child in the middle. Bits of her fly in all directions and the wind picks up the screaming children and scatters them far and wide. All becomes black save for one circle of white. In the centre of the circle is the blindfold with its black eyes staring, staring.

Bee Farseer’s dream journal

The map-room at Aslevjal displayed a territory that included much of the Six Duchies, part of the Mountain Kingdom, a large section of Chalced and lands along both sides of the Rain Wild River. I suspect that it defines for us the boundaries of the ancient Elderlings territory at the time the maps were created. I have been unable to inspect the map-room of the abandoned Elderling city now known as Kelsingra personally, but I believe it would be very similar.

On the Aslevjal map were marked points that correspond to standing stones within the Six Duchies. I think it fair to assume that the identical markings in locations in the Mountains, Rain Wilds and even Chalced indicate standing stones that are Skill-portals. The conditions of those foreign portals are largely unknown, and some Skill-users caution against attempting to employ them until we have physically journeyed there and witnessed that they are in excellent condition. For the Skill-portal stones within the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom, it seems prudent not only to send Skilled couriers to visit every site, but to require every duke to see that any such standing stones are maintained upright. The couriers who visit each stone should document the content and condition of the runes on each face of the stone as well.

In a few instances, we have found standing stones that do not correspond to a marking on the Aslevjal map. We do not know if they were raised after the map was created, or if they are stones that no longer function. We must continue to regard them with caution, as we do all use of Elderling magic. We cannot consider ourselves to be masters of it until we can duplicate their artefacts.

Skill-portals, Chade Fallstar

I ran. I hiked up the heavy white fur coat I wore and ran. I was already too warm and it dragged and snagged on every twig or trunk I passed. Behind me, Dwalia was shouting for someone to ‘Catch her, catch her!’ I could hear the Chalcedean making mooing noises. He galloped wildly about, once passing so close to me that I had to dodge him.

My thoughts raced faster than my feet. I remembered being dragged by my captors into a Skill-pillar. I even recalled how I had bitten the Chalcedean, hoping to make him release Shun. And he had, but he’d held onto me and followed us into the darkness of the Skill-pillar. No Shun had I seen, nor that Servant who had been last in our chain of folk. Perhaps both she and Shun had been left behind. I hoped Shun would escape her. Or perhaps had escaped her? I remembered the cold of a Buck winter clutching at us when we fled. But now we were somewhere else, and instead of deep cold I felt only chill. The snow had retreated into narrow fingers of dirty white in the deeper shade of the trees. The forest smelled of early spring, but no branches had yet leafed out. How did one leap from winter in one place to spring in another? Something was very wrong but I had no time to consider it. I had a more pressing concern. How did one hide in a leafless forest? I knew I could not outrun them. I had to hide.