Assassins Apprentice

Page 4

There, half a dozen other guards lounged on benches and ate and drank at a big scarred table before a fire fully twice as large as the one in the study had been. The room smelled of food, of beer and men’s sweat, of wet wool garments and the smoke of the wood and drip of grease into flames. Hogsheads and small casks ranged against the wall, and smoked joints of meats were dark shapes hung from the rafters. The table bore a clutter of food and dishes. A chunk of meat on a spit was swung back from the flames and dripping fat onto the stone hearth. My stomach clutched suddenly at my ribs at the rich smell. Jason set me rather firmly on the corner of the table closest to the fire’s warmth, jogging the elbow of a man whose face was hidden by a mug.

“Here, Burrich,” Jason said matter-of-factly. “This pup’s for you, now. ” He turned away from me. I watched with interest as he broke a corner as big as his fist off a dark loaf, and then drew his belt knife to take a wedge of cheese off a wheel. He pushed these into my hands, and then stepping to the fire, began sawing a man-sized portion of meat off the joint. I wasted no time in filling my mouth with bread and cheese. Beside me, the man called Burrich set down his mug and glared around at Jason.

“What’s this?” he asked, sounding very much like the man in the warm chamber. He had the same unruly blackness to his hair and beard, but his face was angular and narrow. His face had the color of a man much outdoors. His eyes were brown rather than black, and his hands were long-fingered and clever. He smelled of horses and dogs and blood and leathers.

“He’s yours to watch over, Burrich. Prince Verity says so. ”

“Why?”

“You’re Chivalry’s man, ain’t you? Care for his horse, his hounds, and his hawks?”

“So?”

“So, you got his little bastid, at least until Chivalry gets back and does otherwise with him. ” Jason offered me the slab of dripping meat. I looked from the bread to the cheese I gripped, loath to surrender either, but longing for the hot meat, too. He shrugged at seeing my dilemma, and with a fighting man’s practicality, flipped the meat casually onto the table beside my hip. I stuffed as much bread into my mouth as I could and shifted to where I could watch the meat.

“Chivalry’s bastard?”

Jason shrugged, busy with getting himself bread and meat and cheese of his own. “So said the old plowman what left him here. ” He layered the meat and cheese onto a slab of bread, took an immense bite, and then spoke through it. “Said Chivalry ought to be glad he’d seeded one child, somewhere, and should feed and care for him himself now. ”

An unusual quiet bloomed suddenly in the kitchen. Men paused in their eating, gripping bread or mugs or trenchers, and turned eyes to the man called Burrich. He himself set his mug carefully away from the edge of the table. His voice was quiet and even, his words precise. “If my master has no heir, ’tis Eda’s will, and no fault of his manhood. The Lady Patience has always been delicate, and—”

“Even so, even so,” Jason was quickly agreeing. “And there sits the very proof that there’s nowt wrong with him as a man, as is all I was saying, that’s all. ” He wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. “As like to Prince Chivalry as can be, as even his brother said but a while ago. Not the Crown Prince’s fault if his Lady Patience can’t carry his seed to term. . . . ”

But Burrich had stood suddenly. Jason backed a hasty step or two before he realized I was Burrich’s target, not him. Burrich gripped my shoulders and turned me to the fire. When he firmly took my jaw in his hand and lifted my face to his, he startled me, so that I dropped both bread and cheese. Yet he paid no mind to this as he turned my face toward the fire and studied me as if I were a map. His eyes met mine, and there was a sort of wildness in them, as if what he saw in my face were an injury I’d done him. I started to draw away from that look, but his grip wouldn’t let me. So I stared back at him with as much defiance as I could muster, and saw his upset masked suddenly with a sort of reluctant wonder. And lastly he closed his eyes for a second, hooding them against some pain. “It’s a thing that will try her lady’s will to the edge of her very name,” Burrich said softly.

He released my jaw and stooped awkwardly to pick up the bread and cheese I’d dropped. He brushed them off and handed them back to me. I stared at the thick bandaging on his right calf and over his knee that had kept him from bending his leg. He reseated himself and refilled his mug from a pitcher on the table. He drank again, studying me over the rim of his mug.