LITMIR.BIZ

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was there anything to me, other than a spy or assassin?

      The next morning I arose early and sought Fedwren. He was pleased when I asked to borrow brushes and colours from him. The paper he gave me was better than practice sheets, and he made me promise to show him my efforts. As I made my way up the stairs, I wondered what it would be like to apprentice with him. Surely it could not be any harder than what I had been set to lately.

      But the task I had set myself proved harder than any Patience had put me to. I could see Smithy asleep on his cushion. How could the curve of his back be different from the curve of a rune, the shades of his ears so different from the shading of the herbal illustrations I painstakingly copied from Fedwren’s work? But they were, and I wasted sheet after sheet of paper until I suddenly saw that it was the shadows around the pup that made the curve of his back and the line of his haunch. I needed to paint less, not more, and put down what my eye saw rather than what my mind knew.

      It was late when I washed out my brushes and set them aside. I had two that pleased, and a third that I liked, though it was soft and muzzy, more like a dream of a puppy than a real puppy. More like what I sensed than what I saw, I thought to myself.

      But when I stood outside Lady Patience’s door, I looked down at the papers in my hand and suddenly saw myself as a toddler presenting crushed and wilted dandelions to his mother. What fitting pastime was this for a youth? If I were truly Fedwren’s apprentice, then exercises of this sort would be appropriate, for a good scriber must illustrate and illuminate as well as scribe. But the door opened and there I was, my fingers smudged still with paint and the pages damp in my hand.

      I was wordless when Patience irritably told me to come inside, that I was late enough already. I perched on the edge of a chair with a crumpled cloak and some half-finished bit of stitchery. I set my paintings to one side of me, on top of a stack of tablets.

      ‘I think you could learn to recite verse, if you chose to,’ she remarked with some asperity. ‘And therefore you could learn to compose verse, if you chose to. Rhythm and meter are no more than … is that the puppy?’

      ‘It’s meant to be,’ I muttered, and could not remember feeling more wretchedly embarrassed in my life.

      She lifted the sheets carefully and examined each one in turn, holding them close and then at arm’s length. She stared longest at the muzzy one. ‘Who did these for you?’ she asked at last. ‘Not that it excuses your being late. But I could find good use for someone who can put on paper what the eye sees, with the colours so true. That is the trouble with all the herbals I have; all the herbs are painted the same green, no matter if they are grey or tinged pink as they grow. Such tablets are useless if you are trying to learn from them …’

      ‘I suspect he’s painted the puppy himself, ma’am,’ Lacey interrupted benignly.

      ‘And the paper, this is better than what I’ve had to …’ Patience paused suddenly. ‘You, Thomas?’ (And I think that was the first time she remembered to use the name she had bestowed on me.) ‘You paint like this?’

      Before her incredulous look, I managed a quick nod. She held up the pictures again. ‘Your father could not draw a curved line, save it was on a map. Did your mother draw?’

      ‘I have no memories of her, lady.’ My reply was stiff. I could not recall that anyone had ever been brave enough to ask me such a thing before.

      ‘What, none? But you were five years old. You must remember something: the colour of her hair, her voice, what she called you …’ Was that a pained hunger in her voice, a curiosity she could not quite bear to satisfy?

      Almost, for a moment, I did remember. A smell of mint, or was it … it was gone. ‘Nothing, lady. If she had wanted me to remember her, she would have kept me, I suppose.’ I closed my heart. Surely I owed no remembrance to the mother who had not kept me, nor ever sought me since.

      ‘Well.’ For the first time, I think Patience realized she had taken our conversation into a difficult area. She stared out of the window at a grey day. ‘Someone has taught you well,’ she observed suddenly, too brightly.

      ‘Fedwren.’ When she said nothing, I added, ‘The court scribe, you know. He would like me to apprentice to him. He is pleased with my letters, and works with me now on the copying of his images. When we have time, that is. I am often busy, and he is often out questing after new paper-reeds.’

      ‘Paper-reeds?’ she asked distractedly.

      ‘He has a bit of paper. He had several measures of it, but little by little he has used it. He got it from a trader, who had it from another, and yet another before him, so he does not know where it first came from. But from what he was told, it was made of pounded reeds. The paper is a much better quality than any we make; it is thin, flexible and does not crumble so readily with age; yet it takes ink well, not soaking it up so that the edges of runes blur. Fedwren says that if we could duplicate it, it would change much. With a good, sturdy paper, any man might have a copy of tabletlore from the keep. Were paper cheaper, more children could be taught to write and read, or so he says. I do not understand why he is so …’

      ‘I did not know any here shared my interest.’ A sudden animation lit the lady’s face. ‘Has he tried paper made from pounded lily-root? I have had some success with that. And also with paper created by first weaving and then wet pressing sheets made with threads of bark from the kinue tree. It is strong and flexible, yet the surface leaves much to be desired. Unlike this paper …’

      She glanced again at the sheets in her hand and fell silent. Then she asked hesitantly, ‘You like the puppy this much?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said simply, and our eyes suddenly met. She stared into me in the same distracted way that she often stared out of the window. Abruptly, her eyes brimmed with tears.

      ‘Sometimes, you are so like him that …’ She choked. ‘You should have been mine! It isn’t fair, you should have been mine!’

      She cried out the words so fiercely that I thought she would strike me. Instead, she leaped at me and caught me in a flying hug, at the same time treading upon her dog and overturning a vase of greenery. The dog sprang up with a yelp, the vase shattered on the floor, sending water and shards in all directions, while my lady’s forehead caught me squarely under the chin, so that for a moment all I saw was sparks. Before I could react, she flung herself from me and fled into her bedchamber with a cry like a scalded cat. She slammed the door behind her.

      And all the while Lacey kept on with her tatting.

      ‘She gets like this, sometimes,’ she observed benignly, and nodded me toward the door. ‘Come again tomorrow,’ she reminded me, and added, ‘You know, Lady Patience has become quite fond of you.’

       FOURTEEN

       Galen

      Galen, son of a weaver, came to Buckkeep as a boy. His father was one of Queen Desire’s personal servants who followed her from Farrow. Solicity was then the Skillmaster at Buckkeep. She had instructed King Bounty and his son Shrewd in the Skill, so by the time Shrewd’s sons were boys, she was ancient already. She petitioned King Bounty that she might take an apprentice, and he consented. Galen was greatly favoured by the Queen, and at Queen-in-Waiting Desire’s energetic urging, Solicity chose the youth Galen as her apprentice. At that time, as now, the Skill was denied to bastards of the Farseer House, but when the talent bloomed, unexpected, among those not of royalty, it was cultivated and rewarded. No doubt Galen was such a one as this, a boy showing strange and unexpected talent that came abruptly to the attention of a Skillmaster.

      By the time the Princes Chivalry and Verity were old enough to receive Skill instruction, Galen had advanced enough to assist in their instruction, though he was but a year or so older than they.

      Once again, my life sought a balance and briefly

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