Assassin's Apprentice

I permitted myself a small smile, that brought an answering scowl from Burrich.

“Listen to what I’m telling you. Galen makes no secret that he has no fondness for you. Of course, he doesn’t know you at all, so it’s not your fault. It’s based solely on . . . what you are, and what you caused, and God knows that wasn’t your fault. But if Galen admitted that, then he’d have to admit it was Chivalry’s fault, and I’ve never known him to admit that Chivalry had any faults . . . but you can love a man and know better than that about him.” Burrich took a brisk turn around the room, then came back to the fire.

“Just tell me what you want to say,” I suggested.

“I’m trying,” he snapped. “It’s not easy to know what to say. I’m not even sure if I should be speaking to you. Is this interference, or counsel? But your lessons haven’t started yet. So I say this now. Do your best for him. Don’t talk back to Galen. Be respectful and courteous. Listen to all he says and learn it as well and quickly as you can.” He paused again.

“I hadn’t intended to do otherwise,” I pointed out a bit tartly, for I could tell that none of this was what Burrich was trying to say.

“I know that, Fitz!” He sighed suddenly, and threw himself down at the table opposite me. With the heels of both hands he pressed at his temples, as if pained. I had never seen him so agitated. “A long time ago I talked to you about that other . . . magic. The Wit. The being with the beasts, almost becoming one of them.” He paused and glanced about the room as if worried someone would hear. He leaned in closer to me and spoke softly but urgently. “Stay clear of it. I’ve tried my best to get you to see it’s shameful and wrong. But I’ve never really felt that you agreed. Oh, I know you’ve abided by my rule against it, most of the time. But a few times I’ve sensed, or suspected, that you were tinkering with things no good man touches. I tell you, Fitz, I’d sooner see . . . I’d sooner see you Forged. Yes, don’t look so shocked, that’s truly how I feel. And as for Galen . . . Look, Fitz, don’t even mention it to him. Don’t speak of it, don’t even think of it near him. It’s little that I know about the Skill and how it works. But sometimes . . . oh, sometimes when your father touched me with it, it seemed he knew my heart before I did, and saw things that I kept buried even from myself.”

A sudden deep blush suffused Burrich’s dark face, and almost I thought I saw tears stand in his dark eyes. He turned aside from me to the fire, and I sensed we were coming to the heart of what he needed to say. Needed, not wanted. There was a deep fear in him, one he denied himself. A lesser man, a man less stern with himself, would have trembled with it.

“. . . fear for you, boy.” He spoke to the stones above the mantelpiece, and his voice was so deep a rumble that I almost couldn’t understand him.

“Why?” A simple question unlocks best, Chade had taught me.

“I don’t know if he will see it in you. Or what he will do if he does. I’ve heard . . . no. I know it’s true. There was a woman, actually, little more than a girl. She had a way with birds. She lived in the hills to the west of here, and it was said she could call a wild hawk from the sky. Some folk admired her, and said it was a gift. They took sick poultry to her, or called her in when hens wouldn’t set their eggs. She did aught but good, for all I heard. But Galen spoke out against her. Said she was an abomination, and that it would be the worse for the world if she lived to breed. And one morning she was found beaten to death.”

“Galen did it?”

Burrich shrugged, a gesture most unlike him. “His horse had been out of the stable that night. That much I know. And his hands were bruised, and he had scratches on his face and neck. But not the scratches a woman would have dealt him, boy. Talon marks, as if a hawk had tried to strike him.”

“And you said nothing?” I asked incredulously.

He barked a bitter laugh. “Another spoke before I could. Galen was accused, by the girl’s cousin, who happened to work here in the stables. Galen would not deny it. They went out to the Witness Stones and fought one another for El’s justice, which always prevails there. Higher than the King’s court is the answer to a question settled there, and no one may dispute it. The boy died. Everyone said it was the El’s justice, that the boy had accused Galen falsely. One said it to Galen. And he replied that El’s justice was that the girl had died before she bred, and her tainted cousin, too.”

Burrich fell silent. I was queasy with what he had told me, and a cold fear snaked through me. A question once decided at the Witness Stones could not be raised again. That was more than law, it was the very will of the gods. So I was to be taught by a man who was a murderer, a man who would try to kill me if he suspected I had the Wit.