Assassin's Apprentice (5 page)

The town became the world to me, with the keep a place I went to sleep. It was summer, a wonderful time in a port town. No matter where I went, Buckkeep Town was alive with comings and goings. Goods came down the Buck River from the Inland Duchies, on flat river barges manned by sweating bargemen. They spoke
learnedly about shoals and bars and landmarks and the rising and falling of the river waters. Their freight was hauled up into the town shops or warehouses, and then down again to the docks and into the holds of the sea ships. Those were manned by swearing sailors who sneered at the rivermen and their inland ways. They spoke of tides and storms and nights when not even the stars would show their faces to guide them. And fishermen tied up to Buckkeep docks as well, and were the most genial of the group. At least so they were when the fish were running well.

Kerry taught me the docks and the taverns, and how a quick-footed boy might earn three or even five pence a day, running messages up the steep streets of the town. We thought ourselves sharp and daring, to thus undercut the bigger boys who asked two pence or even more for just one errand. I don’t think I have ever been as brave since as I was then. If I close my eyes, I can smell those glorious days. Oakum and tar and fresh wood shavings from the dry docks where the shipwrights wielded their drawknives and mallets. The sweet smell of very fresh fish, and the poisonous odor of a catch held too long on a hot day. Bales of wool in the sun added their own note to the scent of oak kegs of mellow Sandsedge brandy. Sheaves of fevergone hay waiting to sweeten a forepeak mingled scents with crates of hard melons. And all of these smells were swirled by a wind off the bay, seasoned with salt and iodine. Nosy brought all he scented to my attention as his keener senses overrode my duller ones.

Kerry and I would be sent to fetch a navigator gone to say good-bye to his wife, or to bear a sampling of spices to a buyer
at a shop. The harbormaster might send us running to let a crew know some fool had tied the lines wrong and the tide was about to abandon their ship. But I liked best the errands that took us into the taverns. There the storytellers and gossips plied their trades. The storytellers told the classic tales, of voyages of discovery and crews who braved terrible storms and of foolish captains who took down their ships with all hands. I learned many of the traditional ones by heart, but the tales I loved best came not from the professional storytellers but from the sailors themselves. These were not the tales told at the hearths for all to hear, but the warnings and tidings passed from crew to crew as the men shared a bottle of brandy or a loaf of yellow pollen bread.

They spoke of catches they’d made, nets full to sinking the boat almost, or of marvelous fish and beasts glimpsed only in the path of a full moon as it cut a ship’s wake. There were stories of villages raided by Outislanders, both on the coast and on the outlying islands of our Duchy, and tales of pirates and battles at sea and ships taken by treachery from within. Most gripping were the tales of the Red-Ship Raiders, Outislanders who both raided and pirated, and attacked not only our ships and towns but even other Outislander ships. Some scoffed at the notion of the red-keeled ships, and mocked those who told of Outislander pirates turning against other pirates like themselves.

But Kerry and I and Nosy would sit under the tables with our backs braced against the legs, nibbling penny sweet loaves, and
listen wide-eyed to tales of red-keeled ships with a dozen bodies swinging from their yardarms, not dead, no, but bound men who jerked and shrieked when the gulls came down to peck at them. We would listen to deliciously scary tales until even the stuffy taverns seemed chilling cold, and then we would race down to the docks again, to earn another penny.

Once Kerry, Molly, and I built a raft of driftwood logs and poled it about under the docks. We left it tied up there, and when the tide came up, it battered loose a whole section of dock and damaged two skiffs. For days we dreaded that someone would discover we were the culprits. And one time a tavern keeper boxed Kerry’s ears and accused us both of stealing. Our revenge was the stinking herring we wedged up under the supports of his tabletops. It rotted and stank and made flies for days before he found it.

I learned a smattering of trades in my travels: fish buying, net mending, boat building, and idling. I learned even more of human nature. I became a quick judge of who would actually pay the promised penny for a message delivered, and who would just laugh at me when I came to collect. I knew which baker could be begged from, and which shops were easiest to thieve from. And through it all, Nosy was at my side, so bonded to me now that I seldom separated my mind completely from his. I used his nose, his eyes, and his jaws as freely as my own, and never thought it the least bit strange.

So the better part of the summer passed. But one fine day, with the sun riding a sky bluer than the sea, my good fortune came at last to an end. Molly, Kerry, and I had pilfered a fine
string of liver sausages from a smokehouse and were fleeing down the street with the rightful owner in pursuit. Nosy was with us, as always. The other children had come to accept him as a part of me. I don’t think it ever occurred to them to wonder at our singleness of mind. Newboy and Nosy we were, and they probably thought it but a clever trick that Nosy would know before I threw where to be to catch our shared bounty. Thus there were actually four of us, racing down the cluttered street, passing the sausages from grubby hand to damp jaws and back to hand again while behind us the owner bellowed and chased us in vain.

Then Burrich stepped out of a shop.

I was running toward him. We recognized one another in a moment of mutual dismay. The blackness of the look that appeared on his face left me no doubts about my conduct. Flee, I decided in a breath, and dodged away from his reaching hands, only to discover in sudden befuddlement that I had somehow run right into him.

I do not like to dwell on what happened next. I was soundly cuffed, not only by Burrich but by the enraged owner of the sausages. All my fellow culprits save Nosy evaporated into the nooks and crannies of the street. Nosy came bellying up to Burrich, to be cuffed and scolded. I watched in agony as Burrich took coins from his pouch to pay the sausage man. He kept a grip on the back of my shirt that nearly lifted me off my feet. When the sausage man had departed and the little crowd who had gathered to watch my discomfiture was dispersing, he finally released me. I wondered at the look of disgust he gave me. With
one more backhanded cuff on the back of my head, he commanded, “Get home. Now.”

We did, more speedily than ever we had before. We found our pallet before the hearth and waited in trepidation. And waited, and waited, through the long afternoon and into early evening. Both of us got hungry, but knew better than to leave. There had been something in Burrich’s face more frightening than even the anger of Molly’s papa.

When Burrich did come, the full night was in place. We heard his step on the stair, and I did not need Nosy’s keener senses to know that Burrich had been drinking. We shrank in on ourselves as he let himself into the dimmed room. His breathing was heavy, and it took him longer than usual to kindle several tapers from the single one I had set out. That done, he dropped onto a bench and regarded the two of us. Nosy whined and then fell over on his side in puppy supplication. I longed to do the same, but contented myself with looking up at him fearfully. After a moment he spoke.

“Fitz. What’s to come of you? What’s to come of us both? Running with beggar thieves in the streets, with the blood of kings in your veins. Packing up like animals.”

I didn’t speak.

“And me as much to blame as you, I suppose. Come here, then. Come here, boy.”

I ventured a step or two closer. I didn’t like coming too close.

Burrich frowned at my caution. “Are you hurt, boy?”

I shook my head.

“Then come here.”

I hesitated, and Nosy whined in an agony of indecision.

Burrich glanced down at him in puzzlement. I could see his mind working through a wine-induced haze. His eyes went from the pup to me and back again, and a sickened look spread across his face. He shook his head. Slowly he stood and walked away from the table and the pup, favoring his damaged leg. In the corner of the chamber there was a small rack, supporting an assortment of dusty tools and objects. Slowly Burrich reached up and took one down. It was made of wood and leather, stiff with disuse. He swung it, and the short leather lash smacked smartly against his leg. “Know what this is, boy?” he asked gently, in a kind voice.

I shook my head mutely.

“Dog whip.”

I looked at him blankly. There was nothing in my experience or Nosy’s to tell me how to react to this. He must have seen my confusion. He smiled genially and his voice remained friendly, but I sensed something hidden in his manner, something waiting.

“It’s a tool, Fitz. A teaching device. When you get a pup that won’t mind—when you say to a pup, “Come here,’ and the pup refuses to come—well, a few sharp lashes from this, and the pup learns to listen and obey the first time. Just a few sharp cuts is all it takes to make a pup learn to mind.” He spoke casually as he lowered the whip and let the short lash dance lightly over the floor. Neither Nosy nor I could take our eyes off it, and when he suddenly flipped the whole object at
Nosy, the pup gave a yelp of terror and leaped back from it, and then rushed to cower behind me.

And Burrich slowly sank down, covering his eyes as he folded himself onto a bench by the fireplace. “Oh, Eda,” he breathed, between a curse and a prayer. “I guessed, I suspected, when I saw you running together like that, but damn El’s eyes, I didn’t want to be right. I didn’t want to be right. I’ve never hit a pup with that damn thing in my life. Nosy had no reason to fear it. Not unless you’d been sharing minds with him.”

Whatever the danger had been, I sensed that it had passed. I sank down to sit beside Nosy, who crawled up into my lap and nosed at my face anxiously. I quieted him, suggesting we wait and see what happened next. Boy and pup, we sat, watching Burrich’s stillness. When he finally raised his face, I was astounded to see that he looked as if he had been crying. Like my mother, I remember thinking, but oddly I cannot now recall an image of her weeping. Only of Burrich’s grieved face.

“Fitz. Boy. Come here,” he said softly, and this time there was something in his voice that could not be disobeyed. I rose and went to him, Nosy at my heels. “No,” he said to the pup, and pointed to a place by his boot, but me he lifted onto the bench beside him.

“Fitz,” he began, and then paused. He took a deep breath and started again. “Fitz, this is wrong. It’s bad, very bad, what you’ve been doing with this pup. It’s unnatural. It’s worse than stealing or lying. It makes a man less than a man. Do you understand me?”

I looked at him blankly. He sighed and tried again.

“Boy, you’re of the royal blood. Bastard or not, you’re Chivalry’s own son, of the old line. And this thing you’re doing, it’s wrong. It’s not worthy of you. Do you understand?”

I shook my head mutely.

“There, you see. You’re not talking anymore. Now talk to me. Who taught you to do this?”

I tried. “Do what?” My voice felt creaky and rough.

Burrich’s eyes grew rounder. I sensed his effort at control. “You know what I mean. Who taught you to be with the dog, in his mind, seeing things with him, letting him see with you, telling each other things?”

I mulled this over for a moment. Yes, that was what had been happening. “No one,” I answered at last. “It just happened. We were together a lot,” I added, thinking that might explain it.

Burrich regarded me gravely. “You don’t speak like a child,” he observed suddenly. “But I’ve heard that was the way of it, with those who had the old Wit. That from the beginning, they were never truly children. They always knew too much, and as they got older they knew even more. That was why it was never accounted a crime, in the old days, to hunt them down and burn them. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Fitz?”

I shook my head, and when he frowned at my silence, I forced myself to add, “But I’m trying. What is the old Wit?”

Burrich looked incredulous, then suspicious. “Boy!” he threatened me, but I only looked at him. After a moment he conceded my ignorance.

“The old Wit,” he began slowly. His face darkened, and he looked down at his hands as if remembering an old sin. “It’s the power of the beast blood, just as the Skill comes from the line of kings. It starts out like a blessing, giving you the tongues of the animals. But then it seizes you and draws you down, makes you a beast like the rest of them. Until finally there’s not a shred of humanity in you, and you run and give tongue and taste blood, as if the pack were all you had ever known. Until no man could look on you and think you had ever been a man.” His voice had gotten lower and lower as he spoke, and he had not looked at me, but had turned to the fire and stared into the failing flames there. “There’s some as say a man takes on the shape of a beast then, but he kills with a man’s passion rather than a beast’s simple hunger. Kills for the killing . . .

“Is that what you want, Fitz? To take the blood of kings that’s in you, and drown it in the blood of the wild hunt? To be as a beast among beasts, simply for the sake of the knowledge it brings you? Worse yet, think on what comes before. Will the scent of fresh blood touch off your temper, will the sight of prey shut down your thoughts?” His voice grew softer still, and I heard the sickness he felt as he asked me, “Will you wake fevered and asweat because somewhere a bitch is in season and your companion scents it? Will that be the knowledge you take to your lady’s bed?”

I sat small beside him. “I do not know,” I said in a little voice.

He turned to face me, outraged. “You don’t know?” he growled. “I tell you where it will lead, and you say you don’t
know?”