Assassin's Apprentice

We were walking on Long Beach, in the light of the summer evening sun. The wind off the water was a welcome bit of cool after a muggy day. Burrich had been called away to Springmouth to see if he could figure out why all the cattle there were developing huge hide sores. It meant no morning lessons for me, but many, many more chores with the horses and hounds in his absence, especially as Cob had gone to Turlake with Regal, to manage his horses and hounds for a summer hunt.

But the opposite weight of the balance was that my evenings were less supervised, and I had more time to visit town.

My evening walks with Molly were almost a routine now. Her father's health was failing and he scarcely needed to drink to fall into an early and deep sleep each night. Molly would pack a bit of cheese and sausage for us, or a small loaf and some smoked fish, and we would take a basket and a bottle of cheap wine and walk out down the beach to the breakwater rocks. There we would sit on the rocks as they gave up the last heat of the day, and Molly would tell me about her day's work and the day's gossip and I would listen. Sometimes our elbows bumped as we walked.

"Sara, the butcher's daughter, told me that she positively yearns for winter to come. The winds and ice will beat the Red-Ships back to their own shores for a bit, and give us a rest from fear, she says. But then Kelty up and says that maybe we'll be able to stop fearing more Forging, but that we'll still have to fear the Forged folk that are loose in our land. Rumor says that some from Forge have left there, now that there's nothing left for them to steal, and that they travel about as bandits, robbing travelers."

"I doubt it. More than likely it's other folk doing the robbing, but trying to pass themselves off as Forged folk to send revenge looking elsewhere. Forged folk don't have enough kinship left in them to be a band of anything," I contradicted her lazily. I was looking out across the bay, my eyes almost closed against the glare of the sun on the water. I didn't have to look at Molly to feel her there beside me. It was an interesting tension, one I didn't fully understand. She was sixteen, and I about fourteen, and those two years loomed between us like an insurmountable wall. Yet she always made time for me and seemed to enjoy my company. She seemed as aware of me as I was of her. But if I quested toward her at all, she would draw back, halting to shake a pebble from her shoe or suddenly speaking of her father's illness and how much he needed her. Yet if I drew my sensings back from that tension, she became uncertain and shyer of speech, and would try to look at my face and the set of my mouth and eyes. I didn't understand it, but it was as if we held a string taut between us. But now I heard an edge of annoyance in her speech.

"Oh, I see. And you know so much of Forged folk, do you, more than those who have been robbed by them?"

Her tart words caught me off balance and it was a moment or two before I could speak. Molly knew nothing of Chade and me, let alone of my side trip with him to Forge. To her, I was an errand boy for the keep, working for the stablemaster when I wasn't fetching for the scribe. I couldn't betray my firsthand knowledge, let alone how I had sensed what Forging was.

"I've heard the talk of the guards, when they're around the stables and kitchens at night. Soldiers like them have seen much of all kinds of folk, and they're the ones who say that the Forged ones have no friendships, no family, no kinship ties at all left. Still, I suppose if one of them took to robbing travelers, others would copy him, and it would be almost the same as a band of robbers."

"Perhaps." She seemed mollified by my comments. "Look, let's climb up there to eat."

"Up there" was a shelf on the cliff's edge rather than the breakwater. But I assented with a nod, and the next handful of minutes were spent in getting ourselves and our basket up there. It required more arduous climbing than our earlier expeditions had. I caught myself watching to see how Molly would manage her skirts, and taking opportunities to catch at her arm to balance her, or take her hand to help her up a steep bit while she kept hold of the basket. In a flash of insight I knew that Molly's suggestion that we climb had been her way of manipulating the situation to cause this. We finally gained the ledge and sat, looking out over the water with her basket between us, and I was savoring my awareness of her awareness of me. It reminded me of the clubs of the Springfest jugglers as they handed them back and forth, back and forth, more and more and faster and faster. The silence lasted until a time when one of us had to speak. I looked at her, but she looked aside. She looked into the basket and said, "Oh, dandelion wine? I thought that wasn't any good until after midwinter."