Assassin's Apprentice

“Why have you changed your mind?”

“Because that which I sought to prevent came to pass. But you survived it. So I seek now to . . .” His words trailed off. “It is as you said. Why should I speak at all, when I cannot speak plainly?”

“If I said that, I regret it. It is not a thing one should say to a friend. I do not remember it.”

He smiled faintly. “If you do not remember it, then neither shall I.” He reached and took both of my hands in his. His grip was oddly cool. A shiver passed over me at his touch. “Would you continue, if I asked it of you? As a friend?”

The word sounded so odd from his lips. He spoke it without mockery, carefully, as if the saying of it aloud could shatter the meaning. His colorless eyes held mine. I found I could not say no. So I nodded.

Even so, I rose reluctantly. He watched me with an impassive interest as I straightened the clothes I’d slept in, splashed my face, and then tore into the bread he’d brought. “I don’t want to go,” I told him as I finished the first roll and took up the second. “I don’t see what it can accomplish.”

“I don’t know why he bothers with you,” the Fool agreed. The familiar cynicism was back.

“Galen? He has to, the King . . .”

“Burrich.”

“He just likes bossing me about,” I complained, and it sounded childish, even to me.

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. And I left my room, wondering, and climbed the tall tower to the Queen’s stripped garden and was still in time to be the first one there.

16

Lessons

ACCORDING TO ANCIENT CHRONICLES, Skillusers were organized in coteries of six. These groups did not usually include any of exceptional royal blood, but were limited to cousins and nephews of the direct line of ascension, or those who showed an aptitude and were judged worthy. One of the most famous, Crossfire’s Coterie, provides a splendid example of how they functioned. Dedicated to Queen Vision, Crossfire and the others of her coterie had been trained by a Skillmaster called Tactic. The partners in this coterie were mutually chosen by one another, and then received special training from Tactic to bind them into a close unit. Whether scattered across the Six Duchies to collect or disseminate information, or when massed as a group for the purpose of confounding and demoralizing the enemy, their deeds became legendary. Their final heroism, detailed in the ballad “Crossfire’s Sacrifice,” was the massing of their strength, which they channeled to Queen Vision during the battle of Besham. Unbeknownst to the exhausted Queen, they gave to her more than they could spare themselves, and in the midst of the victory celebration the coterie was discovered in their tower, drained and dying. Perhaps the people’s love of Crossfire’s Coterie stemmed in part from their all being cripples in one form or another: blind, lame, harelipped, or disfigured by fire were all of the six, yet in the Skill their strength was greater than that of the largest warship, and more important to the defense of the Queen.