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
v3.1
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.
