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

I recall the spitting-wet days of winter's end as I learned the route from my
stall to the kitchen. I was free to come and go there as I pleased. Sometimes
there was a cook in attendance, setting meat onto the hearth hooks or pummeling
bread dough or breaching a cask of drink. More often there was not, and I helped
myself to whatever had been left out on the table, and shared generously with
the pup that swiftly became my constant companion. Men came and went, eating and
drinking, and regarding me with a speculative curiosity that I came to accept as
normal. The men had a sameness about them, with their rough wool cloaks and
leggings, their hard bodies and easy movements, and the crest of a leaping buck
that each bore over his heart. My presence made some of them uncomfortable. I
grew accustomed to the mutter of voices that began whenever I left the kitchen.
Burrich was a constant in those days, giving me the same care he gave to
Chivalry's beasts; I was fed, watered, groomed, and exercised, said exercise
usually coming in the form of trotting at his heels as he performed his other
duties. But those memories are blurry, and details, such as those of washing or
changing garments, have probably faded with a six-year-olds calm assumptions of
such things as normal. Certainly I remember the hound pup, Nosy. His coat was
red and slick and short, and bristly in a way that prickled me through my
clothes when we shared the horse blanket at night. His eyes were green as copper
ore, his nose the color of cooked liver, and the insides of his mouth and tongue
were mottled pink and black. When we were not eating in the kitchen, we wrestled
in the courtyard or in the straw of the box stall. Such was my world for however
long it was I was there. Not too long, I think, for I do not recall the weather
changing. All my memories of that time are of raw days and blustery wind, and
snow and ice that partially melted each day but were restored by night's
freezes.
One other memory I have of that time, but it is not sharp-edged. Rather it is
warm and softly tinted, like a rich old tapestry seen in a dim room. I recall
being roused from sleep by the pup's wriggling and the yellow light of a lantern
being held over me. Two men bent over me, but Burrich stood stiffly behind them
and I was not afraid.
"Now you've wakened him," warned the one, and he was Prince Verity, the man
from the warmly lit chamber of my first evening.
"So? He'll go back to sleep as soon as we leave. Damn him, he has his
father's eyes as well. I swear, I'd have known his blood no matter where I saw
him. There'll be no denying it to any that see him. But have neither you nor
Burrich the sense of a flea? Bastard or not, you don't stable a child among
beasts. Was there nowhere else you could put him?"
The man who spoke was like Verity around the jaw and eyes, but there the
resemblance ended. This man was younger by far. His cheeks were beardless, and
his scented and smoothed hair was finer and brown. His cheeks and forehead had
been stung to redness by the night's chill, but it was a new thing, not Verity's
weathered ruddiness. And Verity dressed as his men dressed, in practical woolens
of sturdy weave and subdued colors. Only the crest on his breast showed
brighter, in gold and silver thread. But the younger man with him gleamed in
scarlets and primrose, and his cloak drooped with twice the width of cloth
needed to cover a man. The doublet that showed beneath it was a rich cream, and
laden with lace. The scarf at his throat was secured with a leaping stag done in
gold, its single eye a winking green gem. And the careful turn of his words was
like a twisted chain of gold compared to the simple links of Verity's speech.