Assassin's Quest

The hugeness of her eyes of my words let me know I'd said exactly the wrong thing. I left the wagon, berating myself for getting involved at all.

I'd lost all my healing herbs and my pot of Burrich's ointment when I had abandoned my things in Tradeford. I'd noticed a flower that looked a bit like a stunted goldenrod in the area where the sheep were grazing, however, and some succulents sort of like bloodroot. So I pulled up one of the succulents, but it smelled wrong, and the juice from the leaves was sticky rather than like jelly. I washed my hands and then looked at the stunted goldenrod. It smelled right. I shrugged. I started out picking just a handful of leaves, but then decided as long as I was at it, I could restock a bit of what I'd lost. It appeared to be the same herb, but growing smaller and more straggly in this dry rocky soil. I spread out my harvest on the tail of the cart and sorted through it. The fatter leaves I left to dry. The smaller tips I crushed between two cleaned stones, and then took the resulting paste on one of the stones to the puppeteer's wagon. The girl looked at it with doubt, but nodded hesitantly when I told her, "This will stop the bleeding. Soonest closed is smallest scar."

When she took the rag away from her face, I saw that it had almost stopped bleeding. I smoothed on a fingertip's worth of the woundwort paste anyway. She sat quietly under my touch, and it was suddenly unnerving to recall that I had not touched a woman's face since I'd last seen Molly. This girl had blue eyes and they were wide-open and looking up into my face. I looked aside from the earnest gaze. "There. Now leave it alone. Don't wipe at it, don't touch it with your fingers, don't wash it. Let the scab form and then do your best to leave that alone."

"Thank you," she said in a tiny voice.

"Welcome," I told her, and turned to leave.

"My name is Tassin," she said to my back.

"I know. I've heard him roaring it at you," I said. I started to go down the steps.

"He's an awful man. I hate him! I'd run away if I could."

It didn't seem like a good time simply to walk away from her. I stepped off the wagon and paused. "I know it's hard to feel a strap when you're trying hard. But … that's how it is. If you ran away and had no food, no place to sleep, and your clothing all going to rags, that would be worse. Try to do better, so he won't take up the strap." I believed so little of what I said, I could scarcely form the words. But those words seemed better than to tell her to leave now and run away. She wouldn't survive a day on the open prairie.

"I don't want to do better." She'd found a spark of spirit, to be defiant. "I don't want to be a puppeteer at all. Master Dell knew that when he bought my years."

I edged away back toward my sheep, but she came down the steps and followed after me.

"There was a man I liked in our village. He'd made an offer for me to be his wife, but had no money just then. He was a farmer, you see, and it was spring. No farmer has money in spring. He told my mother he'd pay a bride-price for me at harvest time. But my mother said, `If he's poor now with one mouth to feed, he'll only be poorer after he has two. Or more.' And then she sold me to the puppeteer, for half what he'd usually pay for an apprentice, because I wasn't willing."

"They do it differently where I'm from," I said awkwardly. I couldn't grasp what she was telling me. "Parents pay a master to take on their child as apprentice, hoping the child can make a better life."

She smoothed her hair back from her face. It was light brown, with a lot of curl to it. "I've heard of that. Some do it that way, but most don't. They buy an apprentice, usually a willing one, and if he doesn't work out, then they can sell him for a drudge. Then you're not much better than a slave for six years." She sniffed. "Some say it makes an apprentice try harder, to know he may end up doing scut work in a kitchen or pumping a bellows in a smithy for six years if his master isn't pleased."

"Well. It sounds to me like you'd better learn to like puppets," I said lamely. I sat on the tail of my master's cart and looked out over my flock. She sat down next to me.

"Or hope someone buys me from my master," she said despondently.

"You make yourself sound like a slave," I said reluctantly. "It's not that bad, is it?"

"Doing something you think is stupid, day after day?" she asked me. "And being hit for not doing it perfectly? How is that better than being a slave?"

"Well, you're fed and clothed and sheltered. And he's giving you a chance to learn something, a trade that would let you travel all over the Six Duchies if you became good at it. You might end up performing for the King's Court at Buckkeep."