Assassin’s Apprentice. Робин Хобб

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 nightshirt, 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 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 the room, 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, 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 such as 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 honour 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 like 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-watch towers, 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 kneeling by the grey, 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 finally to 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