Assassin's Apprentice (The Illustrated Edition) Page 9

  “It is a mess. More than a mess, I suppose. But, well. It’s been a while, I suppose. And longer than a while. Well. It’s soon put to rights. But first, introductions are in order. And I suppose it is a bit nippy to be standing about in just a nightshirt. This way, boy.”

  I followed him to the comfortable end of the room. He seated himself in a battered wooden chair that was overdraped with blankets. My bare toes dug gratefully into the nap of a woolen rug. I stood before him, waiting, as those green eyes prowled over me. For some minutes the silence held. Then he spoke.

  “First, let me introduce you to yourself. Your pedigree is written all over you. Shrewd chose to acknowledge it, for all his denials wouldn’t have sufficed to convince anyone otherwise.” He paused for an instant and smiled as if something amused him. “A shame Galen refuses to teach you the Skill. But years ago it was restricted, for fear it would become too common a tool. I’ll wager if old Galen were to try to teach you, he’d find you apt. But we have no time to worry about what won’t happen.” He sighed meditatively and was silent for a moment. Abruptly he went on, “Burrich’s shown you both how to work, and how to obey. Two things that Burrich himself excels at. You’re not especially strong, or fast, or bright. Don’t think you are. But you’ll have the stubbornness to wear down anyone stronger, or faster, or brighter than yourself. And that’s more of a danger to you than to anyone else. But that is not what is now most important about you.

  “You are the King’s man now. And you must begin to understand, now, right now, that that is the most important thing about you. He feeds you, he clothes you, he sees you are educated. And all he asks in return, for now, is your loyalty. Later he will ask your service. Those are the conditions under which I will teach you. That you are the King’s man, and loyal to him completely. For if you are otherwise, it would be too dangerous to educate you in my art.” He paused and for a long moment we simply looked at one another. “Do you agree?” he asked, and it was not a simple question but the sealing of a bargain.

  “I do,” I said, and then, as he waited: “I give you my word.”

  “Good.” He spoke the word heartily. “Now. On to other things. Have you ever seen me before?”

  “No.” I realized for an instant how strange that was. For, though there were often strangers in the keep, this man had obviously been a resident for a long, long time. And almost all those who lived there, I knew by sight if not name.

  “Do you know who I am, boy? Or why you’re here?”

  I shook my head a quick negative to each question. “Well, no one else does either. So you mind it stays that way. Make yourself clear on that—you speak to no one of what we do here, nor of anything you learn. Understand that?”

  My nod must have satisfied him, for he seemed to relax in the chair. His bony hands gripped the knobs of his knees through his woolen robe. “Good. Good. Now. You can call me Chade. And I shall call you?” He paused and waited, but when I did not offer a name, he filled in, “Boy. That’s not names for either of us, but they’ll do, for the time we’ll have together. So. I’m Chade, and I’m yet another teacher that Shrewd has found for you. It took him a while to remember I was here, and then it took him a space to nerve himself to ask me. And it took me even longer to agree to teach you. But all that’s done now. As to what I’m to teach you…well.”

  He rose and moved to the fire. He cocked his head as he stared into it, then stooped to take a poker and stir the embers to fresh flames. “It’s murder, more or less. Killing people. The fine art of diplomatic assassination. Or blinding, or deafening. Or a weakening of the limbs, or a paralysis or a debilitating cough or impotency. Or early senility, or insanity or…but it doesn’t matter. It’s all been my trade. And it will be yours, if you agree. Just know, from the beginning, that I’m going to be teaching you how to kill people. For your king. Not in the showy way Hod is teaching you, not on the battlefield where others see and cheer you on. No. I’ll be teaching you the nasty, furtive, polite ways to kill people. You’ll either develop a taste for it, or not. That isn’t something I’m in charge of. But I’ll make sure you know how. And I’ll make sure of one other thing, for that was the stipulation I made with King Shrewd. That you know what you are learning, as I never did when I was your age. So. I’m to teach you to be an assassin. Is that all right with you, boy?”

  I nodded again, uncertain, but not knowing what else to do.

  He peered at me. “You can speak, can’t you? You’re not a mute as well as a bastard, are you?”

  I swallowed. “No, sir. I can speak.”

  “Well, then, do speak. Don’t just nod. Tell me what you think of all this. Of who I am and what I just proposed that we do.”

  Invited to speak, I yet stood dumb. I stared at the poxed face, the papery skin of his hands, and felt the gleam of his green eyes on me. I moved my tongue inside my mouth, but found only silence. His manner invited words, but his visage was still more terrifying than anything I had ever imagined.

  “Boy,” he said, and the gentleness in his voice startled me into meeting his eyes. “I can teach you even if you hate me, or if you despise the lessons. I can teach you if you are bored, or lazy or stupid. But I can’t teach you if you’re afraid to speak to me. At least, not the way I want to teach you. And I can’t teach you if you decide this is something you’d rather not learn. But you have to tell me. You’ve learned to guard your thoughts so well, you’re almost afraid to let yourself know what they are. But try speaking them aloud, now, to me. You won’t be punished.”

  “I don’t much like it,” I suddenly blurted. “The idea of killing people.”

  “Ah.” He paused. “Neither did I, when it came down to it. Nor do I, still.” He sighed suddenly, deeply. “As each time comes, you’ll decide. The first time will be hardest. But know, for now, that that decision is many years away. And in the meantime, you have much to learn.” He hesitated. “There is this, boy. And you should remember it in every situation, not just this one. Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn’t wrong. Or right. It’s just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That’s all. For now, do you think you could learn how to do it, and later decide if you want to do it?”

  Such a question to put to a boy. Even then, something in me raised its hackles and sniffed at the idea, but boy that I was, I could find no objection to raise. And curiosity was nibbling at me.

  “I can learn it.”

  “Good.” He smiled, but there was a tiredness to his face and he didn’t seem as pleased as he might have. “That’s well enough, then. Well enough.” He looked around the room. “We may as well begin tonight. Let’s start by tidying up. There’s a broom over there. Oh, but first, change out of your nightshirt into something…ah, there’s a ragged old robe over there. That’ll do for now. Can’t have the washer folk wondering why your nightshirts smell of camphor and pain’s ease, can we? Now, you sweep up the floor a bit while I put away a few things.”

  And so passed the next few hours. I swept, then mopped the stone floor. He directed me as I cleared the paraphernalia from the great table. I turned the herbs on their drying rack. I fed the three lizards he had caged in the corner, chopping up some sticky old meat into chunks that they gulped whole. I wiped clean a number of pots and bowls and stored them. And he worked alongside me, seeming grateful for the company, and chatted to me as if we were both old men. Or both young boys.

  “No letters as yet? No ciphering. Bagrash! What’s the old man thinking? Well, I shall see that remedied swiftly. You’ve your father’s brow, boy, and just his way of wrinkling it. Has anyone ever told you that before? Ah, there you are, Slink, you rascal! What mischief have you been up to now?”

  A brown weasel appeared from behind a tapestry, and we were introduced to one another. Chade let me feed Slink quail eggs from a bowl on the table, and laughed when the little beast followed me about begging for more. He gave me a c
opper bracelet that I found under the table, warning that it might make my wrist green, and cautioning that if anyone asked me about it, I should say I had found it behind the stables.

  At some time we stopped for honey cakes and hot spiced wine. We sat together at a low table on some rugs before the fireplace, and I watched the firelight dancing over his scarred face and wondered why it had seemed so frightening. He noticed me watching him, and his face contorted in a smile. “Seems familiar, doesn’t it, boy? My face, I mean.”

  It didn’t. I had been staring at the grotesque scars on the pasty white skin. I had no idea what he meant. I stared at him questioningly, trying to figure it out.

  “Don’t trouble yourself about it, boy. It leaves its tracks on all of us, and sooner or later you’ll get the tumble of it. But now, well…” He rose, stretching, so that his cassock bared his skinny white calves. “Now it’s mostly later. Or earlier, depending on which end of the day you fancy most. Time you headed back to your bed. Now. You’ll remember that this is all a very dark secret, won’t you? Not just me and this room, but the whole thing, waking up at night and lessons in how to kill people, and all of it.”

  “I’ll remember,” I told him, and then, sensing that it would mean something to him, I added, “You have my word.”

  He chuckled, and then nodded almost sadly. I changed back into my night robe, and he saw me down the steps. He held his glowing light by my bed as I clambered in, and then smoothed the blankets over me as no one had done since I’d left Burrich’s chambers. I think I was asleep before he had even departed from my bedside.

  Brant was sent to wake me the next morning, so late was I in arising. I came awake groggy, my head pounding painfully. But as soon as he left, I sprang from my bed and raced to the corner of my room. Cold stone met my hands as I pushed against the wall there, and no crack in mortar or stone gave any sign of the secret door I felt sure must be there. Never for one instant did I think Chade had been a dream, and even if I had, there remained the simple copper bracelet on my wrist to prove he wasn’t.

  I dressed hurriedly and passed through the kitchens for a slab of bread and cheese that I was still eating when I got to the stables. Burrich was out of sorts with my tardiness and found fault with every aspect of my horsemanship and stable tasks. I remember well how he berated me. “Don’t think that because you’ve a room up in the castle and a crest on your jerkin that you can turn into some sprawlabout rogue who snores in his bed until all hours and then only rises to fluff at his hair. I’ll not have it. Bastard you may be, but you’re Chivalry’s bastard, and I’ll make you a man he’ll be proud of.”

  I paused, the grooming brushes still in my hands. “You mean Regal, don’t you?”

  My unwonted question startled him. “What?”

  “When you talk about rogues who stay in bed all morning and do nothing except fuss about hair and garments, you mean how Regal is.”

  Burrich opened his mouth and then shut it. His wind-reddened cheeks grew redder. “Neither you nor I,” he muttered at last, “are in a position to criticize any of the Princes. I meant only as a general rule, that sleeping the morning away ill befits a man, and even less so a boy.”

  “And never a prince.” I said this, and then stopped, to wonder where the thought had come from.

  “And never a prince,” Burrich agreed grimly. He was busy in the next stall with a gelding’s hot leg. The animal winced suddenly, and I heard Burrich grunt with the effort of holding him. “Your father never slept past the sun’s midpoint because he’d been drinking the night before. Of course, he had a head for wine like I’ve never seen since, but there was discipline to it, too. Nor did he have some man standing by to rouse him. He got himself out of bed, and then expected those in his command to follow his example. It didn’t always make him popular, but his soldiers respected him. Men like that in a leader, that he demands of himself the same thing he expects of them. And I’ll tell you another thing. Your father didn’t waste coin on decking himself out like a peacock. When he was a younger man, before he was wed to Lady Patience, he was at dinner one evening, at one of the lesser keeps. They’d seated me not too far below him, a great honor to me, and I overheard some of his conversation with the daughter they’d seated so hopefully next to the King-in-Waiting. She’d asked him what he thought of the emeralds she wore, and he had complimented her on them. ‘I had wondered, sir, if you enjoyed jewels, for you wear none of them yourself tonight,’ she said flirtatiously. And he replied, quite seriously, that his jewels shone as brilliantly as hers, and much larger. ‘Oh, and where do you keep such gems, for I should dearly love to see them.’ Well, he replied, he’d be happy to show them to her later that evening, when it was darker. I saw her blush, expecting a tryst of some kind. And later he did invite her out onto the battlements with him, but he took with them half the dinner guests as well. And he pointed out the lights of the coast watchtowers, shining clearly in the dark, and told her that he considered those his best and dearest jewels, and that he spent the coin from her father’s taxes to keep them shining so. And then he pointed out to the guests the winking lights of that lord’s own watchmen in the fortifications of his keep, and told them that when they looked at their duke, they should see those shining lights as the jewels on his brow. It was quite a compliment to the Duke and Duchess, and the other nobles there took note of it. The Outislanders had very few successful raids that summer. That was how Chivalry ruled. By example, and by the grace of his words. So should any real prince do.”

  “I’m not a real prince. I’m a bastard.” It came oddly from my mouth, that word I heard so often and so seldom said.

  Burrich sighed softly. “Be your blood, boy, and ignore what anyone else thinks of you.”

  “Sometimes I get tired of doing the hard things.”

  “So do I.”

  I absorbed this in silence for a while as I worked my way down Sooty’s shoulder. Burrich, still crouched by the gelding, spoke suddenly. “I don’t ask any more of you than I ask of myself. You know that’s true.”

  “I know that,” I replied, surprised that he’d mentioned it further.

  “I just want to do my best by you.”

  This was a whole new idea to me. After a moment I asked, “Because if you could make Chivalry proud of me, of what you’d made me into, then maybe he would come back?”

  The rhythmic sound of Burrich’s hands working liniment into the gelding’s leg slowed, then ceased abruptly. But he remained crouched down by the horse and spoke quietly through the wall of the stall. “No. I don’t think that. I don’t suppose anything would make him come back. And even if he did,” and Burrich spoke more slowly, “even if he did, he wouldn’t be who he was. Before, I mean.”

  “It’s all my fault he went away, isn’t it?” The words of the weaving women echoed in my head. But for the boy, he’d still be in line to be King.

  Burrich paused long. “I don’t suppose it’s any man’s fault that he’s born….” He sighed, and the words seemed to come more reluctantly. “And there’s certainly no way a babe can make itself not a bastard. No. Chivalry brought his downfall on himself, though that’s a hard thing for me to say.” I heard his hands go back to work on the gelding’s leg.

  “And your downfall, too.” I said it to Sooty’s shoulder, softly, never dreaming he’d hear.

  But a moment or two later I heard him mutter, “I do well enough for myself, Fitz. I do well enough.”

  He finished his task and came around into Sooty’s stall. “Your tongue’s wagging like the town gossip today, Fitz. What’s got into you?”

  It was my turn to pause and wonder. Something about Chade, I decided. Something about someone who wanted me to understand and have a say in what I was learning had freed up my tongue to finally ask all the questions I’d been carrying about for years. But because I couldn’t very well say so, I shrugged and truthfully replied, “
They’re just things I’ve wondered about for a long time.”

  Burrich grunted his acceptance of the answer. “Well. It’s an improvement that you ask, though I won’t always promise you an answer. It’s good to hear you speak like a man. Makes me worry less about losing you to the beasts.” He glared at me over the last words and then gimped away. I watched him go, and remembered that first night I had seen him, and how a look from him had been enough to quell a whole room full of men. He wasn’t the same man. And it wasn’t just the limp that had changed the way he carried himself and how men looked at him. He was still the acknowledged master in the stables and no one questioned his authority there. But he was no longer the right hand of the King-in-Waiting. Other than watching over me, he wasn’t Chivalry’s man at all anymore. No wonder he couldn’t look at me without resentment. He hadn’t sired the bastard that had been his downfall. For the first time since I had known him, my wariness of him was tinged with pity.

  Chapter

  5

  Loyalties

  In some kingdoms and lands, it is the custom that male children will have precedent over female in matters of inheritance. Such has never been the case in the Six Duchies. Titles are inherited solely by order of birth.