"Robin Hobb - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

sawing a man-sized portion of meat off the joint. I wasted no time in filling my
mouth with bread and cheese. Beside me, the man called Burrich set down his mug
and glared around at Jason.


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"What's this?" he asked, sounding very much like the man in the warm chamber.
He had the same unruly blackness to his hair and beard, but his face was angular
and narrow. His face had the color of a man much outdoors. His eyes were brown
rather than black, and his hands were long-fingered and clever. He smelled of
horses and dogs and blood and leathers.
"He's yours to watch over, Burrich. Prince Verity says so.
"Why?"
"You're Chivalry's man, ain't you? Care for his horse, his hounds, and his
hawks?"
"so?"
"So, you got his little bastid, at least until Chivalry gets back and does
otherwise with him." Jason offered me the slab of dripping meat. I looked from
the bread to the cheese I gripped, loath to surrender either, but longing for
the hot meat, too. He shrugged at seeing my dilemma, and with a fighting man's
practicality, flipped the meat casually onto the table beside my hip. I stuffed
as much bread into my mouth as I could and shifted to where I could watch the
meat.
"Chivalry's bastard?"
Jason shrugged, busy with getting himself bread and meat and cheese of his
own. "So said the old plowman what left him here." He layered the meat and
cheese onto a slab of bread, took an immense bite, and then spoke through it.
"Said Chivalry ought to be glad he'd seeded one child, somewhere, and should
feed and care for him himself now.
An unusual quiet bloomed suddenly in the kitchen. Men paused in their eating,
gripping bread or mugs or trenchers, and turned eyes to the man called Burrich.
He himself set his mug carefully away from the edge of the table. His voice was
quiet and even, his words precise. "If my master has no heir, 'tis Eda's will,
and no fault of his manhood. The Lady Patience has always been delicate, and-"
"Even so, even so," Jason was quickly agreeing. "And there sits the very
proof that there's nowt wrong with him as a man, as is all I was saying, that's
all." He wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. "As like to Prince Chivalry as
can be, as even his brother said but a while ago. Not the Crown Prince's fault
if his Lady Patience can't carry his seed to term ... ."
But Burrich had stood suddenly. Jason backed a hasty step or two before he
realized I was Burrich's target, not him. Burrich gripped my shoulders and
turned me to the fire. When he firmly took my jaw in his hand and lifted my face
to his, he startled me, so that I dropped both bread and cheese. Yet he paid no
mind to this as he turned my face toward the fire and studied me as if I were a
map. His eyes met mine, and there was a sort of wildness in them, as if what he
saw in my face were an injury I'd done him. I started to draw away from that
look, but his grip wouldn't let me. So I stared back at him with as much
defiance as I could muster, and saw his upset masked suddenly with a sort of