Assassin's Apprentice

I resolved not to borrow trouble, but to keep my word to Verity instead. I asked her if Regal had told her much of her husband, and she became suddenly quiet. I sensed her drawing on her strength as she replied that she knew he was a king-in-waiting with many problems facing his realm. Regal had warned her that Verity was much older than she was, a plain and simple man, who might not take much interest in her. Regal had promised to be ever by her, helping her to adapt, and doing his best to see that the court was not a lonely place for her. So she was prepared. . . .

“How old are you?” I asked impulsively.

“Eighteen,” she replied, and then smiled to see the surprise on my face. “Because I am tall, your people seem to think I am much older than that,” she confided in me.

“Well, you are younger than Verity, then. But not so much more than between many wives and husbands. He will be thirty-three this spring.”

“I had thought him much older than that,” she said wonderingly. “Regal explained they share but a father.”

“It is true that Chivalry and Verity were both sons of King Shrewd’s first queen, but there is not that great a span between them. And Verity, when he is not burdened with the problems of state, is not so dour and severe as you might imagine him. He is a man who knows how to laugh.”

She cast me a sideways glance, as if to see if I was trying to put a better face on Verity than he deserved.

“It is true, Princess. I have seen him laugh like a child at the puppet shows at Springfest. And when all join in for luck at the fruit press to make fall wine, he does not hold back. But his greatest pleasure has always been the hunt. He has a wolfhound, Leon, whom he holds dearer than some men hold their sons.”

“But,” Kettricken ventured to interrupt, “surely this is as he was, once. For Regal speaks of him as a man older than his years, bent down by the cares of his people.”

“Bent down as a tree burdened by snow, that springs erect again with the coming of spring. His last words to me before I left, Princess, were to desire me to speak well of him to you.”

She cast her eyes down quickly, as if to hide from me the sudden lift of her heart. “I see a different man, when you speak of him.” She paused, and then closed her mouth firmly, forbidding herself the request I heard anyway.

“I have always seen him as a kind man. As kind as one lifted to such a responsibility can be. He takes his duties very seriously, and will not spare himself from what his folk need of him. This it is that has made him unable to come here, to you. He engages in a battle with the Red-Ship Raiders, one he couldn’t fight from here. He gives up the interests of a man to fulfill his duty as a prince. Not through a coldness of spirit, or a lack of life in himself.”

She gave me a sideways glance, fighting the smile from her face as if what I told her were sweetest flattery such as a princess must not believe.

“He is taller than I am, but only by a bit. His hair is very dark, as is his beard, when he lets it grow. His eyes are blacker still, yet when he is enthused, they shine. It is true there is a scattering of gray in his hair now that you would not have found a year ago. True, also, that his work has kept him from the sun and the wind, so his shoulders no longer tear the seams of his shirts. But my uncle is still very much a man, and I believe that when the danger of the Red-Ships has been driven from our shores, he will ride and shout and hunt with his hound once more.”

“You give me heart,” she muttered, and then straightened herself as if she had admitted some weakness. Looking at me gravely, she asked, “Why does Regal not speak of his brother so? I thought I went to an old man, shaking of hand, too burdened by his duties to see a wife as anything other than another duty.”

“Perhaps he . . .” I began, and could think of no courtier’s way to say that Regal was frequently deceptive if it gained him his goal. For the life of me, I had no idea what goal might be served by making Kettricken so dread Verity.

“Perhaps he has . . . been . . . unflattering about other things as well,” Kettricken suddenly supposed aloud. Something seemed to alarm her. She took a breath and became suddenly franker. “There was an evening, in my chamber, when we had dined, and Regal had, perhaps, drunk a bit too well. He told tales of you then, saying you had once been a sullen, spoiled child, too ambitious for your birth, but that since the King had made you his poisoner, you seemed content with your lot. He said it seemed to suit you, for even as a boy, you had enjoyed eavesdropping and skulking about and other secretive pursuits. Now, I do not tell you this to make a mischief, but only to let you know what I first believed of you. The next day Regal begged me to believe it had been the fancies of the wine rather than the facts he had shared with me. But one thing he had said that night was too icy a fear for me to entirely lay aside. He said that if the King did send you or Lady Thyme, it would be to poison my brother so that I might be the sole heir to the Mountain Kingdom.”