Fool’s Assassin

Fool’s Assassin is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Robin Hobb

Floor plan © 2014 by Nicolette Caven

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

ISBN 978-0-553-39242-5

eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39243-2

www.delreybooks.com

Jacket design: Beverly Leung

Jacket illustration: © Alejandro Colucci

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Floor Plan

Prologue

Chapter 1: Withywoods

Chapter 2: Spilled Blood

Chapter 3: The Felling of Fallstar

Chapter 4: Preservation

Chapter 5: Arrival

Chapter 6: The Secret Child

Chapter 7: The Presentation

Chapter 8: The Spider’s Lair

Chapter 9: A Childhood

Chapter 10: My Own Voice

Chapter 11: The Last Chance

Chapter 12: Explorations

Chapter 13: Chade

Chapter 14: Dreams

Chapter 15: A Full House

Chapter 16: Honored Guests

Chapter 17: Assassins

Chapter 18: Invisibility

Chapter 19: The Beaten Man

Chapter 20: The Morning After

Chapter 21: Search for the Son

Chapter 22: Perseverance

Chapter 23: The Tutor

Chapter 24: Settling In

Chapter 25: Things to Keep

Chapter 26: Lessons

Chapter 27: Time and Again

Chapter 28: Things Bought

Chapter 29: Mist and Light

Chapter 30: Collision

Chapter 31: A Time of Healing

Chapter 32: The Raid

Epilogue

Dedication

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

PROLOGUE

My dear Lady Fennis,

We have been friends far too long for me to be circumspect. As you so delicately hinted, yes, there has been shattering news delivered to me. My stepson, Prince Chivalry, has exposed himself as the crude fellow I have always known him to be. His bastard child, fathered on a Mountain whore, has been revealed.

As shameful as that is, it could have been handled far more discreetly if his clever-as-a-stone brother Prince Verity had taken swift and decisive action to eliminate the disgrace. Instead he has announced the child in an indiscreet message to my husband.

And so, in the face of this base behavior, what does my lord do? Why, not only does he insist the bastard must be brought to Buckkeep Castle, he then bestows on Chivalry the title to Withywoods, and sends him out to pasture there with his awkward, barren wife. Withywoods! A fine estate that any number of my friends would be pleased to occupy, and he rewards it to his son for fathering a bastard with a foreign commoner! Nor does King Shrewd find it distasteful that said bastard has been brought back here to Buckkeep Castle where any member of my court may see the little Mountain savage.