Farseer 1 – Assassin’s Apprentice

“Nosebleed!” I exclaimed.

She turned to face me full, and for an instant I thought I had been mistaken. A year had passed since I’d last seen her. How could a person change so much? The dark hair that used to be in sensible braids behind her ears now fell free past her shoulders. And she was dressed, not in a jerkin and loose trousers, but in blouse and skirt. The adult garments put me at a loss for words. I might have turned aside and pretended I addressed someone else had her dark eyes not challenged me as she asked me coolly, “Nosebleed?”

I stood my ground. “Aren’t you Molly Nosebleed?”

She lifted a hand to brush some hair back from her cheek. “I’m Molly Chandler.” I saw recognition in her eyes, but her voice was chill as she added, “I’m not sure that I know you. Your name, sir?”

Confused, I reacted without thinking. I quested toward her, found her nervousness, and was surprised by her fears. Thought and voice I sought to soothe it. “I’m Newboy,” I said without hesitation.

Her eyes widened with surprise, and then she laughed at what she construed as a joke. The barrier she had erected between us burst like a soap bubble, and suddenly I knew her as I had before. There was the same warm kinship between us that reminded me of nothing so much as Nosy. All awkwardness disappeared. A crowd was forming about the struggling women, but we left it behind us as we strolled up the cobbled street. I admired her skirts, and she calmly informed me that she had been wearing skirts for several months now and that she quite preferred them to trousers. This one had been her mother’s; she was told that one simply couldn’t get wool woven this fine anymore, or a red as bright as it was dyed. She admired my clothes, and I suddenly realized that perhaps I appeared to her as different as she to me. I had my best shirt on, my trousers had been washed only a few days ago, and I wore boots as fine as any man-at-arms, despite Burrich’s objections about how rapidly I outgrew them. She asked my business and I told her I was on errands for the writing master at the keep. I told her, too, that he was in need of two beeswax tapers, a total fabrication on my part, but one that allowed me to remain by her side as we strolled up the winding street. Our elbows bumped companionably and she talked. She was carrying a basket of her own on her arm. It had several packets and bundles of herbs in it, for scenting candles, she told me. Beeswax took the scent much better than tallow, in her opinion. She made the best scented candles in Buckkeep; even the two other chandlers in town admitted it. This, smell this, this was lavender, wasn’t it lovely? Her mother’s favorite, and hers, too. This was crushsweet, and this beebalm. This was thresher’s root, not her favorite, no, but some said it made a good candle to cure headaches and winter glooms. Mavis Threadsnip had told her that Molly’s mother had mixed it with other herbs and made a wonderful candle, one that would calm even a colicky baby. So Molly had decided to try, by experimenting, to see if she could find the right herbs and re-create her mother’s recipe.

Her calm flaunting of her knowledge and skills left me burning to distinguish myself in her eyes. “I know the thresher’s root,” I told her. “Some use it to make an ointment for sore shoulders and backs. That’s where the name comes from. But if you distill a tincture from it and mix it well in wine, it’s never tasted, and it will make a grown man sleep a day and a night and a day again, or make a child die in his sleep.”

Her eyes widened as I spoke, and at my last words a look of horror came over her face. I fell silent and felt the sharp awkwardness again. “How do you know such things?” she demanded breathlessly.