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Assassin’s Fate
Robin Hobb
The much-anticipated final conclusion to the Fitz and the Fool trilogy.Prince FitzChivalry Farseer’s daughter Bee was violently abducted from Withywoods by Servants of the Four in their search for the Unexpected Son, foretold to wield great power. With Fitz in pursuit, the Servants fled through a Skill-pillar, leaving no trace. It seems certain that they and their young hostage have perished in the Skill-river.Clerres, where White Prophets were trained by the Servants to set the world on a better path, has been corrupted by greed. Fitz is determined to reach the city and take vengeance on the Four, not only for the loss of Bee but also for their torture of the Fool. Accompanied by FitzVigilant, son of the assassin Chade, Chade’s protégé Spark and the stableboy Perseverance, Bee's only friend, their journey will take them from the Elderling city of Kelsingra, down the perilous Rain Wild River, and on to the Pirate Isles.Their mission for revenge will become a voyage of discovery, as well as of reunions, transformations and heartrending shocks. Startling answers to old mysteries are revealed. What became of the liveships Paragon and Vivacia and their crews? What is the origin of the Others and their eerie beach? How are liveships and dragons connected?But Fitz and his followers are not the only ones with a deadly grudge against the Four. An ancient wrong will bring them unlikely and dangerous allies in their quest. And if the corrupt society of Clerres is to be brought down, Fitz and the Fool will have to make a series of profound and fateful sacrifices.ASSASSIN’S FATE is a magnificent tour de force and with it Robin Hobb demonstrates yet again that she is the reigning queen of epic fantasy.
Copyright (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
HarperVoyager
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Robin Hobb 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 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
Dedication (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
To Fitz and the Fool.
My best friends for over twenty years.
Map (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
Contents
Cover (#u499f4269-fe1f-5fc7-aac1-9d202f9f9d9a)
Title Page (#u0d657672-6cc5-5acc-b943-2f44841c1763)
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
PROLOGUE (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
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
ONE (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
Bee Stings (#uffca548d-24d6-508c-9395-0b874ac77ee9)
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.
I hated the coat fiercely. I could not pause to wriggle out the bottom of it, for my hands felt as clumsy as fish flippers and I could not possibly hide from my pursuers in a huge white fur coat. So I fled, knowing I could not escape but too frightened to let them reclaim me.
Choose a place to take a stand. Not where they can corner you but not where they can surround you either. Find a weapon, a stick, a rock, anything. If you cannot escape, make them pay as dearly as you can for capturing you. Fight them all the way.
