Assassin's Apprentice

The Fool shook his head. “You haven't even a clue, have you?”

“About what?”

"About how the stablemaster dragged Galen from his bed, and from thence to the Witness Stones. I wasn't there, of course, or I would be able to tell you how Galen cursed and struck at him at first, but the stablemaster paid no attention. He just hunched his shoulders to the man's blows, and kept silent. He gripped the Skillmaster by the collar, so the man was fair choked, and dragged him along. And the soldiers and guards and stable boys followed in a stream that became a torrent of men. If I had been there, I could tell you how no man dared to interfere, for it was as if the stablemaster had become as Burrich once was, an iron muscled man with a black temper that was like a madness when it came on him. No one, then, dared to brook that temper, and that day, it was as if Burrich was that man again. If he limped still, no one noticed it at all.

“As for the Skillmaster, he flailed and cursed, and then he grew still, and all suspected that he turned what he knew upon his captor. But if he did, it had no effect, save that the stablemaster tightened his grip on the man's neck. And if Galen strove to sway others to his cause, they did not react. Perhaps being choked and dragged was sufficient to break his concentration. Or perhaps his Skill is not so strong as it was rumored. Or perhaps too many remember his mistreatment of them too well to be vulnerable to his wiles. Or perhaps-”

“Fool! Get on with it! What happened?” A light sweat cloaked my body and I shivered, not knowing what I hoped for.

“I wasn't there, of course,” the Fool asserted sweetly. “But I have heard it said that the dark man dragged the skinny man all the way up to the Witness Stones. And there, still gripping the Skillmaster so he could not speak, he asserted his challenge. They would fight. No weapons, but hands only, just as the Skillmaster had assaulted a certain boy the day before. And the Stones would witness, if Burrich won, that Galen had had no call to strike the boy, nor had he the right to refuse to teach the boy. And Galen would have refused the challenge and gone to the King himself, except that the dark man had already called the Stones to witness. And so they fought, in much the same way that a bull fights a bale of straw when he tosses and stamps and gores it. And when he was done, the stablemaster bent and whispered something to the Skillmaster, before he and all others turned and left the man lying there, with the Stones witness to his whimpering and bleeding.”

“What did he say?” I demanded.

“I wasn't there. I saw and heard nothing of it.” The Fool stood and stretched. “You'll be late if you tarry,” he pointed out to me, and left.

“Now stop that,” he commanded me angrily.

“What?” I asked.

“You look at me sometimes with my lord's eyes,” he said quietly, and then as sharply as before, “Well, what did you think to do? Hide in the stables the rest of your life? No. You have to go back. You have to go back and hold up your head and eat your meals among the keep folk, and sleep in your own room, and live your own life. Yes, and go finish those damn lessons in the Skill.”

His first commands had sounded difficult, but the last, I knew, was impossible.

“I can't,” I said, not believing how stupid he was. “Galen wouldn't let me come back to the group. And even if he did, I'd never catch up on all I've missed. I've already failed at it, Burrich. I failed and that's done, and I need to find something else to do with myself. I'd like to learn the hawks, please.” The last I heard myself say with some amazement, for in truth it had never crossed my mind before. Burrich's reply was at least as strange.

“You can't, for the hawks don't like you. You're too warm and you don't mind your own business enough. Now listen to me. You didn't fail, you fool. Galen tried to drive you away. If you don't go back, you'll have let him win. You have to go back and you have to learn it. But”-and here he turned on me, and the anger in his eyes was for me-“you don't have to stand there like a carter's mule while he beats you. You've a birthright to his time and his knowledge. Make him give you what is yours. Don't run away. No one ever gained anything by running away.” He paused, started to say more, and then stopped.

“Newboy ...” she said, and then, “Thank you. For understanding.”

And then she whisked into her shop and shut the door behind her, leaving me chilled and bewildered. She thanked me for understanding her at a time when I had never felt more isolated from her, and everyone else.

“No one is taught self- discipline by beating him half to death.” Burrich spoke carefully, stating the truth for an idiot. His movements were very precise as he set the cup back on the table.

“It was not to teach me ... I don't think he believes I can be taught. It was to show the others what would happen if they failed.”

“Very little worth knowing is taught by fear,” Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly: “It's a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats. Imagine taming a horse that way. Or a dog. Even the most knot- headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick.”

“You've struck me before, when trying to teach me something.”

“Yes. Yes, I have. But to jolt, or warn, or awaken. Not to damage. Never to break a bone or blind an eye or cripple a hand. Never. Never say to anyone that I've struck you, or any creature in my care, that way, for it's not true.” He was indignant that I could even have suggested it.

I thought that I could drag myself up onto a bench, and from there to the top of the wall. And from there. Down. End it.

It was a long journey, in the cold and the dark. Some where I could hear a whimpering, and I despised myself for that, too. But as I scraped myself along, it grew, as a spark in the distance becomes a fire as one approaches. It refused to be ignored. It grew louder in my mind, a whining against my fate, a tiny voice of resistance that forbade that I should die, that denied my failure. It was warmth and light, too, and it grew stronger and stronger as I tried to find its source.

I stopped.

I lay still.

It was inside me. The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn't, wouldn't, didn't love myself. Loved me even if I hated it. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn't crawl any farther. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred a trust.

It was Smithy.

He cried with my pains, physical and mental. And when I stopped struggling toward the wall, he went into a paroxysm of joy, a celebration of triumph for us. And all I could do to reward him was to lie still and no longer attempt to destroy myself. And he assured me it was enough, it was a plenitude, it was a joy. I closed my eyes.

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

Tides wait for no man, and that I know is true. But time? Did the times I was born into await my birth to be? Did the events rumble into place like the great wooden gears of the clock of Sayntanns, meshing with my conception and pushing my life along?

But before I left his chambers that night, I walked to his hearth. With out a word, I placed the knife on the center of his mantel shelf. Actually, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speaking of it or meeting his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it.

I believe that the knife is still there.

He walked me up to my room himself, dragged my tunic off over my head as I stood unsteadily beside my bed, and then casually tumbled me into the bed and tossed a blanket over me. “Now you'll sleep,” he informed me in a thick voice. “And tomorrow we'll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn't kill you after all.”

He made a motion that dismissed me. And I rose, but as I did so I took from his tray a little silver knife, all engraved, that he had been using to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd's eyes widened, but he said not a word.