Assassin's Apprentice

"Has my master no say in this?" Burrich ventured to protest. "It seems to me that if he wants to settle a portion on the family of the boy's mother, and set him aside, then, why surely for the sake of my Lady Patience's sensibilities, he should be allowed that discretion-"

Prince Regal broke in with a snort of disdain. "The time for discretion was before he rolled the wench. The Lady Patience is not the first woman to have to face her husband's bastard. Everyone here knows of his existence; Verity's clumsiness saw to that. There's no point to trying to hide him. And as far as a royal bastard is concerned, none of us can afford to have such sensibilities, Burrich. To leave such a boy in a place like this is like leaving a weapon hovering over the King's throat. Surely even a houndsman can see that. And even if you can't, your master will."

An icy harshness had come into Regal's voice, and I saw Burrich flinch from his voice as I had seen him cower from nothing else. It made me afraid, and I drew the blanket up over my head and burrowed deeper into the straw. Beside me, Vixen growled lightly in the back of her throat. I think it made Regal step back, but I cannot be sure. The men left soon after, and if they spoke any more than that, no memory of it lies within me.

Time passed, and I think it was two, or perhaps three weeks later that I found myself clinging to Burrich's belt and trying to wrap my short legs around a horse behind him as we left that chill village and began what seemed to me an endless journey down to warmer lands. I suppose at some point Chivalry must have come to see the bastard he had sired and must have passed some sort of judgment on himself as regarded me. But I have no memory of such a meeting with my father. The only image I carry of him in my mind is from his portrait on the wall in Buckkeep. Years later I was given to understand that his diplomacy had gone well indeed, securing a treaty and peace that lasted well into my teens and earning the respect and even fondness of the Chyurda.

In truth, I was his only failure that year, but I was a monumental one. He preceded us home to Buckkeep, where he abdicated his claim to the throne. By the time we arrived, he and Lady Patience were gone from court, to live as the Lord and Lady of Withywoods. I have been to Withywoods. Its name bears no relationship to its appearance. It is a warm valley, centered on a gently flowing river that carves a wide plain that nestles between gently rising and rolling foothills. A place to grow grapes and grain and plump children. It is a soft holding, far from the borders, far from the politics of court, far from anything that had been Chivalry's life up to then. It was a pasturing out, a gentle and genteel exile for a man who would have been King. A velvet smothering for a warrior and a silencing of a rare and skilled diplomat.

And so I came to Buckkeep, sole child and bastard of a man I'd never know. Prince Verity became King-in-Waiting and Prince Regal moved up a notch in the line of succession. If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I became.

CHAPTER TWO. Newboy

HERE ARE MANY LEGENDS about Taker, the first Outislander to claim Buckkeep as the First Duchy and the founder of the royal line. One is that the raiding voyage he was on was his first and only foray out from whatever cold harsh island bore him. It is said that upon seeing the timbered fortifications of Buckkeep, he had announced, "If there's a fire and a meal there, I shan't be leaving again." And there was, and he didn't.

But family rumor says that he was a poor sailor, made sick by the heaving water and salt-fish rations that other Outislanders throve upon. That he and his crew had been lost for days upon the water, and if he had not managed to seize Buckkeep and make it his own, his own crew would have drowned him. Nevertheless, the old tapestry in the Great Hall shows him as a well-thewed stalwart grinning fiercely over the prow of his vessel as his oarsmen propel him toward an ancient Buckkeep of logs and poorly dressed stone.