Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

Something of a content warning (torture) applies to the chapter and, to a lesser extent, the discussion following.

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Following a brief note that lays out some of the Servants’ methodology, “Surprises” begins with Chade and Fitz continuing to dose and question members of the Withywoods household. The pair discuss theories about their daughters’ abduction, and Fitz determines to return to Buckkeep and confer with the Fool. Chade determines to accompany him after they finish questioning the members of the household.

Fitz stalks through the estate, musing on his failures once again, and he directs the members of the household he encounters to attend to a diversity of tasks, thinking that occupying them would help them not focus on their own sufferings. Successors to slain members of the household are named, and matters begin to be set to rights until after dinner, when the remaining members of the household are dosed and questioned, the information they provide slotted in among what Chade and Fitz already knew.

As Fitz bears witness, Skilled members of Dutiful’s court join him through that magic, and they confer along with Chade about next steps. A report of the Fool’s declining condition is made to Fitz, and Chade steels him against acting rashly once again. At Chade’s urging, Fitz retires to a fitful, fretful night, after which the pair take breakfast along with the officers of Chade’s rough unit. Preparations are made for setting out, and Chade and Fitz confer as they ride along. Unexpected members of the rough unit join them, attempting to assail them. Battle is joined, and Fitz messily and brutally dispatches of his opponents. Chade is far less kind to his own opponent, extracting information from him, before the two plunge through a standing stone towards Buckkeep.

The present chapter is a reminder, as if one was needed, that Fitz and Chade both are very, very dangerous people within the milieu. The fight, even though it left Fitz injured and Chade in a perilous position, saw the pair of them fight off superior numbers that had the element of surprise in their favor–albeit not so much as they had thought they would. That Fitz is yet capable of savagery is, perhaps, foreshadowing, something with which the Realm of the Elderlings corpus as a whole is concerned and on which the present series focuses more narrowly. If it is, however, it’s not terribly illuminating; it does not take much to guess that a trained killer, magically empowered, hunting for his daughter would resort to no small amount of violence. But then, despite its motions away from it, Hobb’s work is part of the Tolkienian tradition.

Another commonplace in Hobb’s work reemerges in the present chapter, as well: torture. That it pops up in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is amply noted (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, for examples; Selden in Chalced also offers examples). It also pops up in her non-Elderlings work; a contribution to Warriors comes to mind, and I recall it being a factor in the Soldier Son novels. That it sticks out for me is something of uncertain importance. It may well be that it sticks out for me, that my eye finds it because it is primed, for whatever reason, to search out such things. It may well be that it is part of Hobb’s work towards verisimilitude; torture is, certainly and unfortunately, part of the world her readers inhabit, and so working to create a milieu that immerses readers will necessarily involve it. It may well be, however, that there is some authorial preoccupation with it, and while I have noted more than once that biographical criticism is fraught, that it is so does not mean that it is without value, even if I’m not in a position to be able to do much to follow it.

Many are my scholarly somedays, and no few of them will never come.

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