Fool’s Fate - Робин Хобб

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in the Six Duchies. They think it’s unnatural and probably bad luck. But most don’t care much about that, one way or another. They seem to think that would be Clan Narwhal’s bad luck, not theirs. The real sticking point is the dragon-slaying bit.’

      I nodded to his swift summary. Chade had a good man in Riddle. I wondered where he had recruited him and then focused my attention on the man who was speaking. I noticed now that he stood in the middle of a ring painted on the floor. It was intricate and stylized, and yet still recognizable as a serpent grasping its own tail. The man did not give his name before he began speaking. Perhaps he assumed that everyone knew it, or perhaps the only important part of his identity was the sea otter tattooed on his forehead. He spoke simply, without anger, as if explaining something obvious to rather stupid children.

      ‘Icefyre is not a cow that belongs to any one of us. He is not cattle to be offered as part of a bride price. Even less does he belong to the foreigner Prince. How then can he offer the head of a creature that does not belong to him as payment to the Blackwater Mothershouse of the Narwhal Clan? We can only see his promise in one of two ways. Either he has made his offer in ignorance, or it is an affront to us.’

      He paused then and made a strange gesture with his hand. In a moment its meaning was made clear as Prince Dutiful slowly stood and then came to join him in the speaker’s circle. ‘No, Kaempra Otter.’ Dutiful addressed him as warrior-leader for his clan. ‘It was not ignorance. It was not intended as affront. The Narcheska presented this deed to me as a challenge to prove myself worthy of her.’ The Prince lifted his hands and let them fall helplessly. ‘What could I do but accept it? If a woman issued such a challenge to you, saying before your gathered warriors, “accept it or admit cowardice”, what would you do? What would any of you do?’

      Many heads in the assembly nodded to this. Dutiful nodded gravely back to them and then added, ‘So what am I to do now? My word has been given, before your warriors and mine, in the hall of my parents. I have said I will attempt to do this thing. I know of no honourable way to unsay such words. Is there a custom here, among the people of the Narcheska, that allows a man to call back the words that have issued from his mouth?’

      The Prince moved his hands, imitating the same gesture that the Otter kaempra had used to cede him the speaker’s circle. He bowed to the four corners of the hall, and then retreated to his bench again. As he took his seat, Otter spoke again.

      ‘If this was the manner of your accepting the challenge, then I will take no affront toward you. I reserve what I think of clan Blackwater’s daughter for issuing such a challenge. Regardless of the circumstances.’

      I had previously noticed Peottre Blackwater sitting almost by himself on one of the front benches. He scowled at the Otter’s remark but made no indication that he wished to speak. The Narcheska’s father, Arkon Bloodblade, sat a small distance away from Peottre, his Boar warriors ranked about him. Arkon’s brow remained smooth, as if the rebuke had nothing to do with him, and perhaps by his lights that was correct. The Otter had rebuked Elliania as a daughter of the Blackwater family of the Narwhal Clan. Arkon Bloodblade was a Boar. Here, within his own people, he assumed the role that they expected of him. He was only the Narcheska’s father. Her mother’s brother, Peottre Blackwater, was responsible for the quality of her upbringing.

      When the silence had stretched enough that it was obvious no one would offer a defence for what the Narcheska had done, the Otter leader cleared his throat. ‘It is true that as a man you cannot call back your word, Prince of the Farseer Buck Clan. You have said you will try to do this thing, and I will concede that you must do it, or be judged no man at all.

      ‘Yet that does not release us of the Out Islands of our duties. Icefyre is ours. What do our great mothers tell us? He came to us, in the years before years were counted, and asked asylum from his grief. Our wise women granted it to him. And in return for our sheltering, he promised that his protection should be ours. We know the power of his spirit and the invulnerability of his flesh, and fear little that you shall slay him. But if, by some strange twist of fate, you manage to do him injury, on whom will his anger fall after he has killed you? On us.’ He turned slowly in a circle as he spoke, including all the clans as he warned them, ‘If Icefyre is ours, we also belong to him. Like a kin pledge we should see the debt woven between us. If his blood is shed, must not we shed blood in return? If, as his kin, we fail to come to his aid, cannot he exact from us the blood price ten times over, according to our law? This Prince must honour his word as a man. That is so. But after, must not war come to us again, regardless of whether he lives or dies?’

      I saw Arkon Bloodblade draw a long slow breath. I noted now what I had not before, that he held his hand in a certain way, open yet with the fingers pointing toward his sternum. Several men, I now saw, were making the same gesture. A request to speak? Yes, for when the Otter warrior made the now familiar gesture, Bloodblade stood and came to take the man’s place in the circle.

      ‘None of us want war again. Not here in the God Runes, nor in the Prince’s farmers’ fields across the water. Yet a man’s word must be satisfied. And though we all be men here, there is a woman’s will in this as well. What warrior can stand before a woman’s will? What sword can cut her stubbornness? To women Eda has given the islands themselves, and we walk upon them only by her leave. It is not for men to set aside the challenge of a woman, lest our own mothers say, “you do not respect the flesh you sprang from. Walk no more on the earth that Eda has granted us. Be abandoned by us, with only water under your keel and never sand under your feet.” Is that easier than war? We are caught between a man’s word and a woman’s will. Neither can be broken without disgrace to all.’

      I had understood Bloodblade’s words but the full import of their meaning escaped me. Obviously there was custom here we were not familiar with, and I questioned what we had blundered into with our matchmaking. Bleakly I wondered if we had not fallen into a trap. Was the Blackwater family of the Narwhal Clan intent on kindling war between the Six Duchies and the Out Islands? Had their offer of the Narcheska been a sham, to draw us into a situation in which regardless of the outcome, we had invited bloodshed yet again to our shores?

      I studied Peottre Blackwater’s face. His expression was stolid and still, his eyes turned inward. He seemed impassive to the dilemma his sister-daughter had set us, and yet I felt he was not. I sensed rather that we balanced on the knife blade that had already cut deep into him. He looked, I suddenly thought, like a man without choices. A man who could no longer hope, because he knows that no action of his own can save him. He was waiting. He did not plan or plot. He had already done the task he had set out to do. Now he could only wait to see how other men would carry it out. I was certain I was right, and yet what I could not understand or even imagine was why. Why had he done it? Or, as her father had said, was it beyond his control, the will of a woman who might be younger than he was and dependent on him, and yet controlled who might walk on the earth of his mother-holdings?

      I looked around me. There were simply too many differences between us, I decided. How could the Six Duchies ever make a peace with the Out Islands when our customs varied so widely? Yet, tradition had it that the Farseer line had its roots in the Out Islands, that Taker, the first Farseer monarch, had begun his life as an Out Island raider who had seen the log fortress that Buckkeep once was and decided to make it his own. Our lines and our ways had diverged far since those days. Peace and prosperity depended on us finding some common ground.

      The likelihood of that did not seem great.

      I lifted my eyes to find the Prince’s gaze fixed on me. I had not wanted to distract him before. Now I sent him a reassuring thought. Thick is resting in his chamber upstairs. He ate and drank before he went to sleep.

       I wish I could be doing the same. They did not give me so much as a chance to wash my face before they convened the Hetgurd. And now it shows no sign of ending.

       Patience, my prince. They’ll end this eventually. Even Outislanders must eat, drink, and sleep some time.

       Do they piss, do you think? That’s starting to be a very immediate concern to me. I’ve thought of excusing myself quietly, but don’t know how it would be interpreted if I stood and walked out now.

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