Assassin's Apprentice (17 page)

I could almost feel the food being snatched from my jaws. But I took a breath and presented a cheerful countenance to Sitswell, as Burrich had counseled me. I doubt that dour man even noticed. To him I was just one more boy underfoot on a hectic day. He took me to Verity’s chamber and left me, obviously relieved to return to his stables. I tapped softly and Verity’s man opened the door at once.

“Ah! Thank Eda it’s you. Come in, then, for the beast won’t eat and Verity’s sure it’s serious. Hurry up, Fitz.”

The man wore Verity’s badge, but was no one I remembered having met. Sometimes it was disconcerting how many folk knew who I was when I had no inkling who they were. In an adjoining chamber Verity was splashing and instructing someone loudly about what garments he wished for the evening. But he was not my concern. Leon was.

I quested toward him, for I had no qualms about it when Burrich wasn’t about. Leon lifted his bony head and regarded me with martyred eyes. He was lying on Verity’s sweaty shirt in a corner by a cold hearth. He was too hot, he was bored, and if we weren’t going to hunt anything, he wanted to go home.

I made a show of running my hands over him and lifting his lips to examine his gums and then pressing my hand down firmly on
his belly. I finished all this by scratching behind his ears and then told Verity’s man, “There’s nothing wrong with him, he just isn’t hungry. Let’s give him a bowl of cold water and wait. When he wants to eat, he’ll let us know. And let’s take away all this before it spoils in this heat and he eats it anyway and becomes really sick.” I referred to a dish already overfilled with scraps of pastries from a tray that had been set for Verity. None of it was fit for the dog, but I was so hungry I wouldn’t have minded dining off the scraps myself; in fact my stomach growled at the sight of it. “I wonder if I found the kitchens, if they would have a fresh beef bone for him? Something that’s more toy than food is what he would welcome most now. . . .”

“Fitz? Is that you? In here, boy! What’s troubling my Leon?”

“I’ll fetch the bone,” the man assured me, and I rose and stepped to the entry of the adjoining room.

Verity rose dripping from his bath and took the proffered towel from his serving man. He toweled his hair briskly and then again demanded as he dried himself, “What’s the matter with Leon?”

That was Verity’s way. Weeks had passed since we had last spoken, but he took no time for greetings. Chade said it was a lack in him, that he didn’t make his men feel their importance to him. I think he believed that if anything significant had happened to me, someone would have told him. He had a bluff heartiness to him that I enjoyed, an attitude that things must be going well unless someone had told him otherwise.

“Not much is wrong with him, sir. He’s a bit out of sorts
from the heat and from traveling. A night’s rest in a cool place will perk him up; but I’d not fill him full of pastry bits and suety things; not in this hot weather.”

“Well.” Verity bent down to dry his legs. “Like as not, you’re right, boy. Burrich says you’ve a way with the hounds, and I won’t ignore what you say. It’s just that he seemed so moony, and usually he has a good appetite for anything, but especially for anything from my plate.” He seemed abashed, as if caught cooing at an infant. I didn’t know what to say.

“If that’s all, sir, should I be returning to the stables?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder, puzzled. “Seems a bit of a waste of time to me. Hands will see to your mount, won’t he? You need to bathe and dress if you’re to be on time for dinner. Charim? Have you water for him?”

The serving man straightened from arranging Verity’s garments on the bed. “Right away, sir. And I’ll lay out his clothes as well.”

In the space of the next hour, my place in the world seemed to shift topsy-turvy. I had known this was coming. Both Burrich and Chade had tried to prepare me for it. But to suddenly go from an insignificant hanger-on at Buckkeep to part of Verity’s formal entourage was a bit unnerving. Everyone else assumed I knew what was going on.

Verity was dressed and out of the room before I was into the tub. Charim informed me that he had gone to confer with his captain of guards. I was grateful that Charim was such a gossip. He did not consider my rank so lofty as to forbear chatting and
complaining in front of me.

“I’ll make you up a pallet in here for the night. I doubt you’ll be chill. Verity said he wanted you housed close by him, and not just to tend the hound. He has other chores for you as well?”

Charim paused hopefully. I covered my silence by ducking my head into the lukewarm water and soaping the sweat and dust from my hair. I came up for air.

He sighed. “I’ll lay out your clothes for you. Leave me those dirty ones. I’ll wash them out for you.”

It seemed very strange to have someone waiting on me while I washed, and stranger still to have someone supervise my dressing. Charim insisted on straightening the seams on my jerkin and seeing the oversized sleeves on my new best shirt hung to their fullest and most annoying length. My hair had regrown long enough to have snarls in it and these he tugged quickly and painfully out. To a boy accustomed to dressing himself, the primping and inspection seemed endless.

“Blood will tell,” said an awed voice from the entry. I turned to find Verity beholding me with a mixture of pain and amusement on his face.

“He’s the image of Chivalry at that age, is he not, my lord?” Charim sounded immensely pleased with himself.

“He is.” Verity paused to clear his throat. “No man can doubt who fathered you, Fitz. I wonder what my father was thinking when he told me to show you well? Shrewd he is called and shrewd he is; I wonder what he expects to gain. Ah, well.” He sighed. “That is his kind of kingship, and I
leave it to him. Mine is simply to ask a foppish old man why he cannot keep his watchtowers properly manned. Come, boy. It’s time we went down.”

He turned and left without waiting for me. As I hastened after him Charim caught at my arm. “Three steps behind him and on his left. Remember.” And that is where I fell in behind him. As he moved down the hallway others of our entourage stepped out from their chambers and followed their prince. All were decked in their most elaborate finery to maximize this chance to be seen and envied outside of Buckkeep. The fullness of my sleeves was quite reasonable compared with what some were sporting. At least my shoes were not hung with tiny chiming bells or gently rattling amber beads.

Verity paused at the top of a stairway, and a hush fell over the folk gathered below. I looked out over the faces turned up to their prince and had time to read on them every emotion known to mankind. Some women simpered while others appeared to sneer. Some young men struck poses that displayed their clothes; others, dressed more simply, straightened as if to be on guard. I read envy and love, disdain, fear, and on a few faces, hatred. But Verity gave none of them more than a passing glance before he descended. The crowd parted before us to reveal Lord Kelvar himself waiting to conduct us into the dining hall.

Kelvar was not what I expected. Verity had called him foppish, but what I saw was a rapidly aging man, thin and harried, who wore his extravagant clothes as if they were armor against time. His graying hair was pulled back in a thin tail as
if he were still a man-at-arms, and he walked with that peculiar gait of the very good swordsman.

I saw him as Chade had taught me to see folk, and thought I understood him well enough even before we were seated. But it was after we had taken our places at table (and mine, to my surprise, was not so far down from the high folk) that I got my deepest glance into the man’s soul. And this not by any act of his, but in the bearing of his lady as she arrived to join us.

I doubt if Kelvar’s Lady Grace was much more than a hand of years older than I, and she was decked out like a magpie’s nest. Never had I seen accoutrements before that spoke so garishly of expense and so little of taste. She took her seat in a flurry of flourishes and gestures that reminded me of a courting bird. Her scent rolled over me like a wave, and it, too, smelled of coin more than flowers. She had brought a little dog with her, a feist that was all silky hair and big eyes. She cooed over him as she settled him on her lap, and the little beast cuddled against her and set his chin on the edge of the table. And all the time her eyes were on Prince Verity, trying to see if he marked her and was impressed. For my part, I watched Kelvar watch her perform her flirtations for the Prince, and I thought to myself, There is more than half our problems with keeping the watchtowers manned.

Dinner was a trial to me. I was ravenous, but manners forbade that I show it. I ate as I had been instructed, picking up my spoon when Verity did, and setting aside a course as soon as he showed disinterest in it. I longed for a good platter of hot meat with bread to sop up the juices, but what we were offered were tidbits of meat oddly spiced, exotic fruit compotes,
pale breads, and vegetables cooked to pallor and then seasoned. It was an impressive display of good food abused in the name of fashionable cooking. I could see that Verity’s appetite was as slack as mine and wondered if all could see that the Prince was not impressed.

Chade had taught me better than I had known. I was able to nod politely to my dinner companion, a freckled young woman, and follow her conversation about the difficulty of getting good linen fabric in Rippon these days, while letting my ears stray enough to pick up key bits of talk about the table. None of it was about the business that had brought us here. Verity and Lord Kelvar would closet themselves tomorrow for the discussion of that. But much of what I overheard touched on the manning of Watch Island’s tower and cast odd lights on it.

I overheard grumblings that the roads were not as well maintained as previously. Someone commented she was glad to see that repair on Bayguard’s fortifications had been resumed. Another man complained that inland robbers were so common, he could scarcely count on two thirds of his merchandise coming through from Farrow. This, too, seemed to be the basis of my dining companion’s complaint about the lack of good fabric. I looked at Lord Kelvar, and how he doted upon his young wife’s every gesture. As if Chade were whispering in my ear, I heard his judgment. “There is a duke whose mind is not upon the governing of his Duchy.” I suspected Lady Grace was wearing the required road repairs and the wages of those soldiers who would have kept his trade routes policed against brigands. Perhaps the
jewels that dangled from her ears should have gone to pay to man Watch Island’s towers.

Dinner finally ended. My stomach was full, but my hunger unabated, there had been so little substance to the meal. Afterward, two minstrels and a poet entertained us, but I tuned my ears to the casual talk of folk rather than to the fine phrasings of the poet or the ballads of the minstrels. Kelvar sat to the Prince’s right, while his lady sat to the left, her lapdog sharing the chair.

Grace sat basking in the Prince’s presence. Her hands often strayed to touch first an earring, then a bracelet. She was not accustomed to wearing so much jewelry. My suspicion was that she had come of simple stock and was awed by her own position. One minstrel sang “Fair Rose Amidst the Clover,” his eyes on her face, and was rewarded with her flushed cheeks. But as the evening wore on, and I grew weary, I could tell that Lady Grace was fading. She yawned once, lifting a hand too late to cover it. Her little dog had gone to sleep in her lap, and twitched and yipped occasionally in his small-brained dreams. As she grew sleepier she reminded me of a child; she cuddled her dog as if it were a doll, and leaned her head back into the corner of her chair. Twice she started to nod off. I saw her surreptitiously pinching the skin on her wrists in an effort to wake herself up. She was visibly relieved when Kelvar summoned the minstrels and poet forward to reward them for their evening. She took her lord’s arm to follow him off to their bedchamber while never relinquishing the dog she snugged in her arm.

I was relieved to make my way up to Verity’s antechamber.
Charim had found me a feather bed and some blankets. My pallet was fully as comfortable as my own bed. I longed to sleep, but Charim gestured me into Verity’s bedchamber. Verity, ever the soldier, had no use for lackeys to stand about and tug his boots off for him. Charim and I alone attended him. Charim clucked and muttered as he followed Verity about, picking up and smoothing the garments the Prince so casually shed. Verity’s boots he immediately took off into a corner and began working more wax into the leather. Verity dragged a nightshirt on over his head and then turned to me.

“Well? What have you to tell me?”

And so I reported to him as I did to Chade, recounting all I had overheard, in as close to the words as I could manage, and noting who had spoken and to whom. At the last I added my own suppositions about the significance of it all. “Kelvar is a man who has taken a young wife, one who is easily impressed with wealth and gifts,” I summarized. “She has no idea of the responsibilities of her own position, let alone his. Kelvar diverts money, time, and thought from his duties to enthralling her. Were it not disrespectful to say so, I would imagine that his manhood is failing him, and he seeks to satisfy his young bride with gifts as a substitute.”

Verity sighed heavily. He had flung himself onto the bed during the latter half of my recitation. Now he prodded at a too soft pillow, folding it to give more support to his head. “Damn Chivalry,” he said absently. “This is his kind of a knot, not mine. Fitz, you sound like your father. And were he here, he’d
find some subtle way to handle this whole situation. Chiv would have had it solved by now, with one of his smiles and a kiss on someone’s hand. But that’s not my way, and I won’t pretend to it.” He shifted about in his bed uncomfortably, as if he expected me to raise some argument to him about his duty. “Kelvar’s a man and a duke. And he has a duty. He’s to man that tower properly. It’s simple enough, and I intend to tell him that bluntly. Put decent soldiers in that tower and keep them there, and keep them happy enough to do a job. It seems simple to me. And I’m not going to make it into a diplomatic dance.”