Assassin’s Apprentice. Робин Хобб

of a chest, and shoulders that strained the fabric of his shirt. His fists were square and work-scarred, yet ink stained the fingers of his right hand. As he stared at me, his grin gradually widened, until finally he gave a snort of laughter.

      ‘Be damned,’ he finally said. ‘Boy does have Chiv’s look to him, doesn’t he? Fruitful Eda. Who’d have believed it of my illustrious and virtuous brother?’

      The guard made no response at all, nor was one expected from him. He continued to stand alertly, awaiting the next command. A soldier’s soldier.

      The other man continued to regard me curiously. ‘How old?’ he asked the guard.

      ‘Ploughman says six.’ The guard raised a hand to scratch at his cheek, then suddenly seemed to recall he was reporting. He dropped his hand. ‘Sir,’ he added.

      The other didn’t seem to notice the guard’s lapse in discipline. The dark eyes roved over me, and the amusement in his smile grew broader. ‘So make it seven years or so, to allow for her belly to swell. Damn. Yes. That was the first year the Chyurda tried to close the pass. Chivalry was up this way for three, four months, chivvying them into opening it to us. Looks like it wasn’t the only thing he chivvied open. Damn. Who’d have thought it of him?’ He paused, then, ‘Who’s the mother?’ he demanded suddenly.

      The guardsman shifted uncomfortably. ‘Don’t know, sir. There was only the old ploughman on the doorstep, and all him said was that this was Prince Chivalry’s bastid, and he wasn’t going to feed him ner put clothes on his back no more. Said him what got him could care for him now.’

      The man shrugged as if the matter were of no great importance. ‘The boy looks well tended. I give it a week, a fortnight at most before she’s whimpering at the kitchen door because she misses her pup. I’ll find out then if not before. Here, boy, what do they call you?’

      His jerkin was closed with an intricate buckle shaped like a buck’s head. It was brass, then gold, then red as the flames in the fireplace moved. ‘Boy,’ I said. I do not know if I were merely repeating what he and the guardsman had called me, or if I truly had no name besides the word. For a moment the man looked surprised and a look of what might have been pity crossed his face. But it disappeared as swiftly, leaving him looking only discomfited, or mildly annoyed. He glanced back at the map that still awaited him on the table.

      ‘Well,’ he said into the silence. ‘Something’s got to be done with him, at least until Chiv gets back. Jason, see the boy’s fed and bedded somewhere, at least for tonight. I’ll give some thought to what’s to be done with him tomorrow. Can’t have royal bastards cluttering up the countryside.’

      ‘Sir,’ said Jason, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but merely accepting the order. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned me back toward the door. I went somewhat reluctantly, for the room was bright and pleasant and warm. My cold feet had started to tingle, and I knew if I could stay a little longer, I would be warmed through. But the guardsman’s hand was inexorable, and I was steered out of the warm chamber and back into the chill dimness of the drear corridors.

      They seemed all the darker after the warmth and light, and endless as I tried to match the guard’s stride as he wound through them. Perhaps I whimpered, or perhaps he grew tired of my slower pace, for he spun suddenly, seized me, and tossed me up to sit on his shoulder as casually as if I weighed nothing at all. ‘Soggy little pup, you,’ he observed, without rancour, and then bore me down corridors and around turns and up and down steps and finally into the yellow light and space of a large kitchen.

      There half a dozen other guards lounged on benches and ate and drank at a big scarred table before a fire fully twice as large as the one in the study. The room smelled of food, of beer and men’s sweat, of wet wool garments and the smoke of the wood and drip of grease into flames. Hogsheads and small casks ranged against the wall, and smoked joints of meats were dark shapes hung from the rafters. The table bore a clutter of food and dishes. A chunk of meat on a spit was swung back from the flames and dripped fat onto the stone hearth. My stomach clutched my ribs suddenly at the rich smell. Jason set me rather firmly on the corner of the table closest to the fire’s warmth, jogging the elbow of a man whose face was hidden by a mug.

      ‘Here, Burrich,’ Jason said matter-of-factly. ‘This pup’s for you, now.’ He turned away from me. I watched with interest as he broke a corner as big as his fist off a dark loaf, and then drew his belt knife to take a wedge of cheese off a wheel. He pushed these into my hands, and then stepping to the fire, began sawing a man-sized portion of meat off the joint. I wasted no time in filling my mouth with bread and cheese. Beside me, the man called Burrich set down his mug and glared around at Jason.

      ‘What’s this?’ he asked, sounding very much like the man in the warm chamber. He had the same unruly blackness to his hair and beard, but his face was angular and narrow. His face had the colour of a man much outdoors. His eyes were brown rather than black, and his hands were long-fingered and clever. He smelled of horses and dogs and blood and leathers.

      ‘He’s yours to watch over, Burrich. Prince Verity says so.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘You’re Chivalry’s man, ain’t you? Care for his horse, his hounds, and his hawks?’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So, you got his little bastid, at least until Chivalry gets back and does otherwise with him.’ Jason offered me the slab of dripping meat. I looked from the bread to the cheese I gripped, loth to surrender either, but longing for the hot meat, too. He shrugged at seeing my dilemma, and with a fighting man’s practicality, flipped the meat casually onto the table beside my hip. I stuffed as much bread into my mouth as I could, and shifted to where I could watch the meat.

      ‘Chivalry’s bastard?’

      Jason shrugged, busy with getting himself bread and meat and cheese of his own. ‘So said the old ploughman what left him here.’ He layered the meat and cheese onto a slab of bread, took an immense bite, and then spoke through it. ‘Said Chivalry ought to be glad he’d seeded one child, somewhere, and should feed and care for him himself now.’

      An unusual quiet bloomed suddenly in the kitchen. Men paused in their eating, gripping bread or mugs or trenchers, and turned eyes to the man called Burrich. He himself set his mug carefully away from the edge of the table. His voice was quiet and even, his words precise. ‘If my master has no heir, ’tis Eda’s will, and no fault of his manhood. The Lady Patience has always been delicate, and …’

      ‘Even so, even so,’ Jason was quickly agreeing. ‘And there sits the very proof that there’s nowt wrong with him as a man, is all I was saying, that’s all.’ He wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. ‘As like to Prince Chivalry as can be, as even his brother said but a while ago. Not the Crown Prince’s fault if his Lady Patience can’t carry his seed to term …’

      But Burrich had stood suddenly. Jason backed a hasty step or two before he realized I was Burrich’s target, not him. Burrich gripped my shoulders and turned me to the fire. When he firmly took my jaw in his hand and lifted my face to his, he startled me so that I dropped both bread and cheese. Yet he paid no mind to this as he turned my face toward the fire and studied me as if I were a map. His eyes met mine, and there was a sort of wildness in them, as if what he saw in my face were an injury I’d done him. I started to draw away from that look, but his grip wouldn’t let me. So I stared back at him with as much defiance as I could muster, and saw his upset masked suddenly with a sort of reluctant wonder. And lastly he closed his eyes for a second, hooding them against some pain. ‘It’s a thing that will try her lady’s will to the edge of her very name,’ Burrich said softly.

      He released my jaw, and stooped awkwardly to pick up the bread and cheese I’d dropped. He brushed them off and handed them back to me. I stared at the thick bandaging on his right calf and over his knee that had kept him from bending his leg. He reseated himself and refilled his mug from a pitcher on the table. He drank again, studying me over the rim of his mug.

      ‘Who’d Chivalry get him on?’ a man at the other end of the table asked incautiously.