Robin Hobb - 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.

“I . . . I heard an old traveling midwife talking to our midwife up to the keep,” I improvised. “It was . . . a sad story she told, of an injured man given some to help him rest, but his baby got into it as well. A very, very sad story.” Her face was softening and I felt her warming toward me again. “I only tell it to be sure you are careful of the root. Don’t leave it about where any child can get at it.”

“Thank you. I shan’t. Are you interested in herbs and roots? I didn’t know a scribe cared about such things.”

I suddenly realized that she thought I was the scribe’s help boy. I didn’t see any reason to tell her otherwise. “Oh, Fedwren uses many things, for his dyes and inks. Some copies he makes quite plain, but others are fancy, all done with birds and cats and turtles and fish. He showed me an herbal with the greens and flowers of each herb done as the border for the page.”

“That I should dearly love to see,” she said in a heartfelt way, and I instantly began thinking of ways to purloin it for a few days.

“I might be able to get you a copy to read . . . not to keep, but to study for a few days,” I offered hesitantly.

She laughed, but there was a slight edge in it. “As if I could read! Oh, but I imagine you’ve picked up some letters, running about for the scribe’s errands.”

“A few,” I told her, and was surprised at the envy in her eyes when I showed her my list and confessed I could read all seven words on it.

A sudden shyness came over her. She walked more slowly, and I realized we were getting close to the chandlery. I wondered if her father still beat her, but dared not ask about it. Her face, at least, showed no sign of it. We reached the chandlery door and paused there. She made some sudden decision, for she put her hand on my sleeve, took a breath, and then asked, “Do you think you could read something for me? Or even any part of it?”

“I’ll try,” I offered.

“When I . . . now that I wear skirts, my father has given me my mother’s things. She had been dress help to a lady up at the keep when she was a girl, and had letters taught her. I have some tablets she wrote. I’d like to know what they say.”

“I’ll try,” I repeated.

“My father’s in the shop.” She said no more than that, but something in the way her consciousness rang against mine was sufficient.

“I’m to get Scribe Fedwren two beeswax tapers,” I reminded her. “I dare not go back to the keep without them.”

“Be not too familiar with me,” she cautioned me, and then opened the door.

I followed her, but slowly, as if coincidence brought us to the door together. I need not have been so circumspect. Her father slept quite soundly in a chair beside the hearth. I was shocked at the change in him. His skinniness had become skeletal, the flesh on his face reminding me of an undercooked pastry over a lumpy fruit pie. Chade had taught me well. I looked to the man’s fingernails and lips, and even from across the room, I knew he could not live much longer. Perhaps he no longer beat Molly because he no longer had the strength. Molly motioned me to be quiet. She vanished behind the hangings that divided their home from their shop, leaving me to explore the store.

It was a pleasant place, not large, but the ceiling was higher than in most of the shops and dwellings in Buckkeep Town. I suspected it was Molly’s diligence that kept it swept and tidy. The pleasant smells and soft light of her industry filled the room. Her wares hung in pairs by their joined wicks from long dowels on a rack. Fat sensible candles for ships’ use filled another shelf. She even had three glazed pottery lamps on display, for those able to afford such things. In addition to candles, I found she had pots of honey, a natural by-product of the beehives she tended behind the shop that furnished the wax for her finest products.

Then Molly reappeared and motioned to me to come join her. She brought a branch of tapers and a set of tablets to a table and set them out on it. Then she stood back and pressed her lips together as if wondering if what she did were wise.