Farseer 1 – Assassin’s Apprentice

“That was yesterday, sir.” I uncovered the plates. Warm bread swirled with honey and raisins, cold meats, a dish of strawberries, and a small pot of cream for them. All were small portions, almost a child’s serving. I poured the steaming tea into a waiting mug. It was flavored heavily with ginger and peppermint, to cover the ground elfbark’s tang.

Verity glanced at it and then up to me. “Chade never relents, does he?” Spoken so casually, as if Chade’s name were mentioned every day about the keep.

“You need to eat, if you are to continue,” I said neutrally.

“I suppose,” he said wearily, and turned to the tray as if the artfully arranged food were yet another duty to attend. He ate with no relish for the food, and drank the tea in a manful draft, as a medicine, undeceived by ginger or mint. Halfway through the meal he paused with a sigh and gazed out the window for a bit. Then, seeming to come back again, he forced himself to consume each item completely. He pushed the tray aside and leaned back in the chair as if exhausted. I stared. I. had prepared the tea myself. That much elfbark would have had Sooty leaping over the stall walls.

“My prince?” I said, and when he did not stir, I touched his shoulder lightly. “Verity? Are you all right?”

“Verity,” he repeated as in a daze. “Yes. And I prefer that to `sir’ or `my prince’ or `my lord.’ This is my father’s gambit, to send you. Well. I may surprise him yet. But, yes, call me Verity. And tell them I ate. Obedient as ever, I ate. Go on, now, boy. I have work to do.”

He seemed to roust himself with an effort, and once more his gaze went afar. I stacked the dishes as quietly as I could atop the tray and headed toward the door. But as I lifted the latch, he spoke again.

“Boy?”

“Sir?”

“Ah-ah!” he warned me.

“Verity?”

“Leon is in my rooms, boy. Take him out for me, will you? He pines. There is no sense in the both of us shriveling like this.”

“Yes, sir. Verity.”

And so the old hound, past his prime now, came to be in my care. Each day I took him from Verity’s room, and we hunted the back hills and cliffs and the beaches for wolves that had not run there in a score of years. As Chade had suspected, I was badly out of condition, and at first it was all I could do to keep up even with the old hound. But as the days went by we regained our tone, and Leon even caught a rabbit or two for me. Now that I was exiled from Burrich’s domain, I did not scruple to use the Wit whenever I wished. But as I had discovered long ago, I could communicate with Leon, but there was no bond. He did not always heed me, nor even believe me all the time. Had he been but a pup, I am sure we could have bonded to one another. But he was old, and his heart given forever to Verity. The Wit was not dominion over beasts, but only a glimpse into their lives.

And thrice a day I climbed the steeply winding steps, to coax Verity to eat, and to a few words of conversation. Some days it was like speaking to a child or a doddering oldster. On others, he asked after Leon and quizzed me about matters down in Buckkeep Town. Sometimes I was absent for days on my other assignments. Usually, he seemed not to have noticed, but once, after the foray in which I took my knife wound, he watched me awkwardly load his empty dishes onto the tray. “How they must laugh in their beards, if they knew we slay our own.”

I froze, wondering what answer to make to that, for as far as I knew, my tasks were known only to Shrewd and Chade. But Verity’s eyes had gone afar again, and I left silently.

Without intending to, I began to make changes around him. One day, while he was eating, I swept the room, and later that evening, brought up in a separate trip a sackful of strewing reeds and herbs. I had worried that I might be a distraction to him, but Chade had taught me to move quietly. I worked without speaking to him, and as for Verity, he acknowledged neither my coming nor going. But the room was freshened, and the ververia blossoms mixed in with the strewing herbs were an enlivening scent. Coming in once, I discovered him dozing in his hard-backed chair. I brought up cushions, which he ignored for several days, and then one day had arranged to his liking. The room remained bare, but I sensed he needed it so, to preserve his single-mindedness. So what I brought him were the barest items of comfort, no tapestries or wall hangings, no vases of flowers or tinkling wind chimes, but flowering rhymes in pots to ease the headaches that plagued him, and on one stormy day, a blanket against the rain and chill from the open window.

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