Assassin's Apprentice

“It’s meant to be,” I muttered, and could not remember feeling more wretchedly embarrassed in my life.

She lifted the sheets carefully and examined each one in turn, holding them close and then at arm’s length. She stared longest at the muzzy one. “Who did these for you?” she asked at last. “Not that it excuses your being late. But I could find good use for someone who can put on paper what the eye sees, with the colors so true. That is the trouble with all the herbals I have; all the herbs are painted the same green, no matter if they are gray or tinged pink as they grow. Such tablets are useless if you are trying to learn from them—”

“I suspect he’s painted the puppy himself, ma’am,” Lacey interrupted benignly.

“And the paper, this is better than what I’ve had to—” Patience paused suddenly. “You, Thomas?” (And I think that was the first time she remembered to use the name she had bestowed on me.) “You paint like this?”

Before her incredulous look, I managed a quick nod. She held up the pictures again. “Your father could not draw a curved line, save it was on a map. Did your mother draw?”

“I have no memories of her, lady.” My reply was stiff. I could not recall that anyone had ever been brave enough to ask me such a thing before.

“What, none? But you were six years old. You must remember something—the color of her hair, her voice, what she called you. . . .” Was that a pained hunger in her voice, a curiosity she could not quite bear to satisfy?

Almost, for a moment, I did remember. A smell of mint, or was it . . . it was gone. “Nothing, lady. If she had wanted me to remember her, she would have kept me, I suppose.” I closed my heart. Surely I owed no remembrance to the mother who had not kept me, nor ever sought me since.

“Well.” For the first time I think Patience realized she had taken our conversation into a difficult area. She stared out the window at a gray day. “Someone has taught you well,” she observed suddenly, too brightly.

“Fedwren.” When she said nothing, I added, “The court scribe, you know. He would like me to apprentice to him. He is pleased with my letters, and works with me now on the copying of his images. When we have time, that is. I am often busy, and he is often out questing after new paper reeds.”

“Paper reeds?” she asked distractedly.

“He has a bit of paper. He had several measures of it, but little by little he has used it. He got it from a trader, who had it from another, and yet another before him, so he does not know where it first came from. But from what he was told, it was made of pounded reeds. The paper is a much better quality than any we make; it is thin, flexible, and does not crumble so readily with age, yet it takes ink well, not soaking it up so that the edges of runes blur. Fedwren says that if we could duplicate it, it would change much. With a good, sturdy paper, any man might have a copy of tablet lore from the keep. Were paper cheaper, more children could be taught to write and to read both, or so he says. I do not understand why he is so—”

“I did not know any here shared my interest.” A sudden animation lit the lady’s face. “Has he tried paper made from pounded lily root? I have had some success with that. And also with paper created by first weaving and then wet-pressing sheets made with threads of bark from the kinue tree. It is strong and flexible, yet the surface leaves much to be desired. Unlike this paper . . .”

She glanced again at the sheets in her hand and fell silent. Then she asked hesitantly, “You like the puppy this much?”

“Yes,” I said simply, and our eyes suddenly met. She stared into me in the same distracted way that she often stared out the window. Abruptly, her eyes brimmed with tears.

“Sometimes, you are so like him that . . .” She choked. “You should have been mine! It isn’t fair, you should have been mine!”

She cried out the words so fiercely that I thought she would strike me. Instead, she leaped at me and caught me in a flying hug, at the same time treading upon her dog and overturning a vase of greenery. The dog sprang up with a yelp, the vase shattered on the floor, sending water and shards in all directions, while my lady’s forehead caught me squarely under the chin, so that for a moment all I saw was sparks. Before I could react, she flung herself from me and fled into her bedchamber with a cry like a scalded cat. She slammed the door behind her.

And all the while Lacey kept on with her tatting.

“She gets like this, sometimes,” she observed benignly, and nodded me toward the door. “Come again tomorrow,” she reminded me, and added, “You know, Lady Patience has become quite fond of you.”