Assassin’s Apprentice

Chade held me and rocked me as if I were a much younger child. Even in the darkness I knew those bony arms and the herb-and-dust smell of him. Disbelieving, I clung to him and cried until I was hoarse, and my mouth so dry no sound would come at all. ‘You were right,’ he said into my hair, quietly, calmingly. ‘You were right. I was asking you to do something wrong, and you were right to refuse it. You won’t be tested that way again. Not by me.’ And when I was finally still, he left me for a time, and then brought back to me a drink, lukewarm and almost tasteless, but not water. He held the mug to my mouth and I drank it down without questions. Then I lay back so suddenly sleepy that I don’t even remember Chade leaving my room.

I awoke near dawn and reported to Burrich after a hearty breakfast. I was quick at my chores and attentive to my charges and could not at all understand why he had awakened so headachey and grumpy. He muttered something once about ‘his father’s head for spirits’, and then dismissed me early, telling me to take my whistling elsewhere.

Three days later, King Shrewd summoned me in the dawn. He was already dressed, and there was a tray and food for more than one person set out on it. As soon as I arrived, he sent away his man and told me to sit. I took a chair at the small table in his room, and without asking me if I were hungry, he served me food with his own hand and then sat down across from me to eat. The gesture was not lost on me, but even so I could not bring myself to eat much. He spoke only of the food, and said nothing of bargains or loyalty or keeping one’s word. When he saw I had finished eating, he pushed his own plate away. He shifted uncomfortably.

‘It was my idea,’ he said suddenly, almost harshly. ‘Not his. He never approved of it. I insisted. When you’re older, you’ll understand. I can take no chances, not on anyone. But I promised him that you’d know this right from me. It was all my own idea, never his. And I will never ask him to try your mettle in such a way again. On that you have a king’s word.’

He made a motion that dismissed me. And I rose, but as I did so, I took from his tray a little silver knife, all engraved, that he had been using to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd’s eyes widened, but he said not a word.

Two nights later, when Chade summoned me, our lessons resumed as if there had never been a pause. He talked, I listened, I played his stone game and never made an error. He gave me an assignment, and we made small jokes together. He showed me how Slink the weasel would dance for a sausage. All was well between us again. But before I left his chambers that night, I walked to his hearth. Without a word, I placed the knife on the centre of his mantel-shelf. Actually, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speaking of it or meeting his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it.

I believe that the knife is still there.

SIX

Chivalry’s Shadow

There are two traditions about the custom of giving royal offspring names suggestive of virtues or abilities. The one that is most commonly held is that somehow these names are binding; that when such a name is attached to a child who will be trained in the Skill, somehow the Skill melds the name to the child, and the child cannot help but grow up to practise the virtue ascribed to him or her by name. This first tradition is most doggedly believed by those same ones most prone to doff their caps in the presence of minor nobility.

A more ancient tradition attributes such names to accident, at least initially. It is said that King Taker and King Ruler, the first two of the Outislanders to rule what would become the Six Duchies, had no such names at all. Rather that their names in their own foreign tongue were very similar to the sounds of such words in the duchies’ tongue, and thus came to be known by their homonyms rather than by their true names. But for the purposes of royalty, it is better to have the common folk believe that a boy given a noble name must grow to have a noble nature.

‘Boy!’

I lifted my head. Of the half-dozen or so other lads lounging about before the fire, no one else even flinched. The girls took even less notice as I moved up to take my place at the opposite side of the low table where Master Fedwren knelt. He had mastered some trick of inflection that let all know when Boy meant ‘boy’ and when it meant ‘the bastard’.

I tucked my knees under the low table and sat on my feet, then presented Fedwren with my sheet of pith-paper. As he ran his eyes down my careful columns of letters, I let my attention wander.

Winter had harvested us and stored us here in the Great Hall. Outside, a sea storm lashed the walls of the keep while breakers pounded the cliffs with a force that occasionally sent a tremor through the stone floor beneath us. The heavy overcast had stolen even the few hours of watery daylight that winter had left us. It seemed to me that a darkness lay over us like a fog, both outside and within. The dimness penetrated my eyes, so that I felt sleepy without feeling tired. For a brief moment, I let my senses expand, and felt the winter sluggishness of the hounds where they dozed and twitched in the corners. Not even there could I find a thought or image to interest me.

Fires burned in all three of the big hearths, and different groups had gathered before each. At one, fletchers busied themselves with their work, lest tomorrow be a clear enough day to allow for a hunt. I longed to be there, for Sherf’s mellow voice was rising and falling in the telling of some tale, broken frequently with appreciative laughter from her listeners. At the end hearth, children’s voices piped along in the chorus of a song. I recognized it as the Shepherd’s Song, a counting tune. A few watchful mothers tapped toes as they tatted at their lacemaking while Jerdon’s withered old fingers on the harp strings kept the young voices almost in tune.

Here, at our hearth, children old enough to sit still and learn letters, did. Fedwren saw to that. His sharp blue eyes missed nothing. ‘Here,’ he said to me, pointing. ‘You’ve forgotten to cross their tails. Remember how I showed you? Justice, open your eyes and get back to your penwork. Doze off again and I’ll let you bring us another log for the fire. Charity, you can help him if you smirk again. Other than that,’ and his attention was suddenly back on my work again, ‘your lettering is much improved, not only on these Duchian characters, but on the Outislander runes as well. Though those can’t really be properly brushed onto such poor paper. The surface is too porous, and takes the ink too well. Good, pounded bark sheets are what you want for runes,’ and he ran a finger appreciatively over the sheet he was working on. ‘Continue to show this type of work, and before winter’s out I’ll let you make me a copy of Queen Bidewell’s Remedies. What do you say to that?’

I tried to smile and be properly flattered. Copywork was not usually given to students; good paper was too rare, and one careless brushstroke could ruin a sheet. I knew the Remedies was a fairly simple set of herbal properties and prophecies but any copying was an honour to aspire to. Fedwren gave me a fresh sheet of pith-paper. As I rose to return to my place, he lifted a hand to stop me. ‘Boy?’

I paused.

Fedwren looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know who to ask this of, except you. Properly, I’d ask your parents, but …’ Mercifully he let the sentence die. He scratched his beard meditatively with his ink-stained fingers. ‘Winter’s soon over, and I’ll be on my way again. Do you know what I do in summer, boy? I wander all the Six Duchies, getting herbs and berries and roots for my inks, and making provisions for the papers I need. It’s a good life, walking free on the roads in summers and guesting at the keep here all winter. There’s much to be said for scribing for a living.’ He looked at me meditatively. I looked back, wondering what he was getting at.

‘I take an apprentice, every few years. Some of them work out, and go on to do scribing for the lesser keeps. Some don’t. Some don’t have the patience for the detail, or the memory for the inks. I think you would. What would you think about becoming a scribe?’

The question caught me completely off-guard, and I stared at him mutely. It wasn’t just the idea of becoming a scribe; it was the whole notion that Fedwren would want me to be his apprentice, to follow him about and learn the secrets of his trade. Several years had passed since I had begun my bargain with the old King. Other than the nights I spent in Chade’s company or my stolen afternoons with Molly and Kerry, I had never thought of anyone finding me companionable, let alone good material for an apprentice. Fedwren’s proposal left me speechless. He must have sensed my confusion, for he smiled his genial young-old smile.

‘Well, think on it, boy. Scribing’s a good trade, and what other prospects do you have? Between the two of us, I think that some time away from Buckkeep might do you good.’

‘Away from Buckkeep?’ I repeated in wonder. It was like someone opening a curtain. I had never considered the idea. Suddenly the roads leading away from Buckkeep gleamed in my mind, and the weary maps I had been forced to study became places I could go. It transfixed me.

‘Yes,’ Fedwren said softly. ‘Leave Buckkeep. As you grow older, Chivalry’s shadow will grow thinner. It will not always shelter you. Better you were your own man, with your own life and calling to content you before his protection is entirely gone. But you don’t have to answer me now. Think about it. Discuss it with Burrich, perhaps.’

And he handed me my pith-paper and sent me back to my place. I thought about his words, but it was not Burrich I took them to. In the feeble hours of a new day, Chade and I were crouched, head to head, I picking up the red shards of a broken crock that Slink had overset while Chade salvaged the fine black seeds that had scattered in all directions. Slink clung to the top of a sagging tapestry and chirred apologetically, but I sensed his amusement.

‘Come all the way from Kalibar, these seeds, you skinny little pelt!’ Chade scolded him.

‘Kalibar,’ I said, and dredged out, ‘A day’s travel past our border with Sandsedge.’

‘That’s right, my boy,’ Chade muttered approvingly.

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘Me? Oh, no. I meant that they came from that far. I had to send to Fircrest for them. They’ve a large market there, one that draws trade from all six duchies and many of our neighbours as well.’

‘Oh. Fircrest. Have you ever been there?’

Chade considered. ‘A time or two, when I was a younger man. I remember the noise, mostly, and the heat. Inland places are like that: too dry, too hot. I was glad to return to Buckkeep.’

‘Was there any other place you ever went that you liked better than Buckkeep?’

Chade straightened slowly, his pale hand cupped full of fine black seed. ‘Why don’t you just ask me your question instead of beating around the bush?’

So I told him of Fedwren’s offer, and also of my sudden realization that maps were more than lines and colours. They were places and possibilities, and I could leave here and be someone else, be a scribe, or …

‘No.’ Chade spoke softly but abruptly. ‘No matter where you went, you would still be Chivalry’s bastard. Fedwren is more perspicacious than I believed him to be, but he still doesn’t understand. Not the whole picture. He sees that here at court you must always be a bastard, must always be something of a pariah. What he doesn’t realize is that here, partaking of King Shrewd’s bounty, learning your lessons, under his eye, you are not a threat to him. Certainly, you are under Chivalry’s shadow here. Certainly it does protect you. But were you away from here, far from being unneedful of such protection, you would become a danger to King Shrewd, and a greater danger to his heirs after him. You would have no simple life of freedom as a wandering scribe. Rather you would be found in your inn bed with your throat cut some morning, or with an arrow through you on the high road.’

A coldness shivered through me. ‘But why?’ I asked softly.

Chade sighed. He dumped the seeds into a dish, dusted his hands lightly to shake loose those that clung to his fingers. ‘Because you’re a royal bastard, and hostage to your own blood-lines. For now, as I say, you’re no threat to Shrewd. You’re too young, and besides, he has you right where he can watch you. But he’s looking down the road. And you should be, too. These are restless times. The Outislanders are getting braver about their raids. The coast folk are beginning to grumble, saying we need more patrol ships, and some say warships of our own, to raid as we are raided. But the Inland Duchies want no part of paying for ships of any kind, especially not warships that might precipitate us into a full-scale war. They complain the coast is all the king thinks of, with no care for their farming. And the mountain folk are becoming more chary about the use of their passes. The trade fees grow steeper every month. So the merchants mumble and complain to each other. To the south, in Sandsedge and beyond, there is drought, and times are hard. Everyone there curses, as if the King and Verity were to blame for that as well. Verity is a fine fellow to have a mug with, but he is neither the soldier nor the diplomat that Chivalry was. He would rather hunt winter buck, or listen to a minstrel by the fireside than travel winter roads in raw weather, just to stay in touch with the other duchies. Sooner or later, if things do not improve, people will look about and say, “Well, a bastard’s not so large a thing to make a fuss over. Chivalry should have come to power; he’d soon put a stop to all this. He might have been a bit stiff about protocol, but at least he got things done, and didn’t let foreigners trample all over us”.’

‘So Chivalry might yet become King?’ The question sent a queer thrill through me. Instantly I was imagining his triumphant return to Buckkeep, our eventual meeting, and … What then?

Chade seemed to be reading my face. ‘No, boy. Not likely at all. Even if the folk all wanted him to, I doubt that he’d go against what he set upon himself, or against the King’s wishes. But it would cause mumblings and grumblings, and those could lead to riots and skirmishes, oh, and a generally bad climate for a bastard to be running around free in. You’d have to be settled one way or another. Either as a corpse, or as the King’s tool.’

‘The King’s tool. I see.’ An oppression settled over me. My brief glimpse of blue skies arching over yellow roads and me travelling down them astride Sooty suddenly vanished. I thought of the hounds in their kennels instead, or of the hawk, hooded and strapped, that rode on the King’s wrist and was loosed only to do the King’s will.

‘It doesn’t have to be that bad,’ Chade said quietly. ‘Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.’

‘I’m never going to get to go anywhere, am I?’ Despite the newness of the idea, travelling suddenly seemed immensely important to me.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Chade was rummaging about for something to use as a stopper on the dish full of seeds. He finally contented himself with putting a saucer on top of it. ‘You’ll go to many places. Quietly, and when the family interests require you to go there. But that’s not all that different for any prince of the blood. Do you think Chivalry got to choose where he would go to work his diplomacy? Do you think Verity likes being sent off to view towns raided by Outislanders, to hear the complaints of folks who insist that if only they’d been better fortified or better manned, none of this would have happened? A true prince has very little freedom when it comes to where he will go or how he will spend his time. Chivalry has probably more of both now than he ever had before.’

‘Except that he can’t come back to Buckkeep?’ The flash of insight made me freeze, my hands full of shards.

‘Except he can’t come back to Buckkeep. It doesn’t do to stir folks up with visits from a former King-in-Waiting. Better he faded quietly away.’

I tossed the shards into the hearth. ‘At least he gets to go somewhere,’ I muttered. ‘I can’t even go to town …’

‘And it’s that important to you? To go down to a grubby, greasy little port like Buckkeep Town?’

‘There are other people there …’ I hesitated. Not even Chade knew of my town friends. I plunged ahead. ‘They call me Newboy. And they don’t think “the bastard” every time they look at me.’ I had never put it into words before, but suddenly the attraction of town was quite clear to me.

‘Ah,’ said Chade, and his shoulders moved as if he sighed, but he was silent. And a moment later he was telling me how one could sicken a man just by feeding him rhubarb and spinach at the same sitting, sicken him even to death if the portions were sufficient, and never set a bit of poison on the table at all. I asked him how to keep others at the same table from also being sickened, and our discussion wandered from there. Only later did it seem to me that his words regarding Chivalry had been almost prophetic.

Two days later I was surprised to be told that Fedwren had requested my services for a day or so. I was surprised even more when he gave me a list of supplies he required from town, and enough silver to buy them, with two extra coppers for myself. I held my breath, expecting that Burrich or one of my other masters would forbid it, but instead I was told to hurry on my way. I went out of the gates with a basket on my arm and my brain giddy with sudden freedom. I counted up the months since I had last been able to slip away from Buckkeep, and was shocked to find it had been a year or better. Immediately I planned to renew my old familiarity with the town. No one had told me when I had to return, and I was confident I could snatch an hour or two to myself and no one the wiser.

The disparity of the items on Fedwren’s list took me all over the town. I had no idea what use a scribe had for dried Sea-Maid’s Hair, or for a peck of forester’s nuts. Perhaps he used them to make his coloured inks, I decided, and when I could not find them in the usual shops, I took myself down to the harbour bazaar, where anyone with a blanket and something to sell could declare himself a merchant. The seaweed I found swiftly enough there, and learned it was a common ingredient in chowder. The nuts took longer, for those were something that would have come from inland rather than from the sea, and there were fewer traders who dealt in such things.

But find them I did, alongside baskets of porcupine quills and carved wooden beads and nutcones and pounded bark fabric. The woman who presided over the blanket was old, and her hair had gone silver rather than white or grey. She had a strong, straight nose and her eyes were on bony shelves over her cheeks. It was a racial heritage both strange and oddly familiar to me, and a shiver walked down my back when I suddenly knew she was from the mountains.

‘Keppet,’ said the woman at the next mat as I completed my purchase. I glanced at her, thinking she was addressing the woman I had just paid. But she was staring at me. ‘Keppet,’ she said, quite insistently, and I wondered what it meant in her language. It seemed a request for something, but the older woman only stared coldly out into the street, so I shrugged at her younger neighbour apologetically and turned away as I stowed the nuts in my basket.

I hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when I heard her shriek, ‘Keppet!’ yet again. I looked back to see the two women engaged in a struggle. The older one gripped the younger one’s wrists and the younger one thrashed and kicked to be free of her. Around her, other merchants were getting to their feet in alarm and snatching their own merchandise out of harm’s way. I might have turned back to watch had not another more familiar face met my eyes.

‘Nosebleed!’ I exclaimed.

She turned to face me full-on, and for an instant I thought I had been mistaken. A year had passed since I’d last seen her. How could a person change so much? The dark hair that used to be in sensible braids behind her ears now fell free past her shoulders. And she was dressed not in a jerkin and loose trousers but in blouse and skirt. The adult garments put me at a loss for words. I might have turned aside and pretended I addressed someone else had her dark eyes not challenged me as she asked me coolly, ‘Nosebleed?’

I stood my ground. ‘Aren’t you Molly Nosebleed?’

She lifted a hand to brush some hair back from her cheek. ‘I’m Molly Chandler.’ I saw recognition in her eyes, but her voice was chill as she added, ‘I’m not sure that I know you. Your name, sir?’

Confused, I reacted without thinking. I quested toward her, found her nervousness, and was surprised by her fears. Thought and voice I sought to soothe it. ‘I’m Newboy,’ I said without hesitation.

Her eyes widened with surprise, and then she laughed at what she construed as a joke. The barrier she had erected between us burst like a soap bubble, and suddenly I knew her as I had before. There was the same warm kinship between us that reminded me of nothing so much as Nosy. All awkwardness disappeared. A crowd was forming about the struggling women, but we left it behind us as we strolled up the cobbled street. I admired her skirts, and she calmly informed that she had been wearing skirts for several months now and that she quite preferred them to trousers. This one had been her mother’s; she was told that one simply couldn’t get wool woven this fine any more, or a red as bright as it was dyed. She admired my clothes, and I suddenly realized that perhaps I appeared to her as different as she to me. I had my best shirt on, my trousers had been washed only a few days ago and I wore boots as fine as any man-at-arms, despite Burrich’s objections about how rapidly I outgrew them. She asked my business and I told her I was on errands for the writing master at the keep. I told her too that he was in need of two beeswax tapers, a total fabrication on my part, but one that allowed me to remain by her side as we strolled up the winding street. Our elbows bumped companionably and she talked. She was carrying a basket of her own on her arm. It had several packets and bundles of herbs in it, for scenting candles, she told me. Beeswax took the scent much better than tallow, in her opinion. She made the best scented candles in Buckkeep; even the two other chandlers in town admitted it. This, smell this, this was lavender, wasn’t it lovely? Her mother’s favourite, and hers, too. This was crushsweet, and this beebalm. This was thresher’s root, not her favourite, no, but some said it made a good candle to cure headaches and winter-glooms. Mavis Threadsnip had told her that Molly’s mother had mixed it with other herbs and made a wonderful candle, one that would calm even a colicky baby. So Molly had decided to try, by experimenting, to see if she could find the right herbs to re-create her mother’s recipe.

Her calm flaunting of her knowledge and skills left me burning to distinguish myself in her eyes. ‘I know the thresher’s root,’ I told her. ‘Some use it to make an ointment for sore shoulders and backs. That’s where the name comes from. But if you distil a tincture from it and mix it well in wine it’s never tasted, and it will make a grown man sleep a day and a night and a day again, or make a child die in his sleep.’

Her eyes widened as I spoke, and at my last words a look of horror came over her face. I fell silent and felt the sharp awkwardness again. ‘How do you know such things?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘I … I heard an old travelling midwife talking to our midwife up at the keep,’ I improvised. ‘It was … a sad story she told, of an injured man given some to help him rest, but his baby got into it as well. A very, very sad story.’ Her face was softening and I felt her warming toward me again. ‘I only tell it to be sure you are careful of the root. Don’t leave it about where any child can get at it.’