Assassin's Apprentice (The Illustrated Edition) by Robin Hobb

Author:Robin Hobb [Hobb, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2002-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

13

Smithy

The Lady Patience established her eccentricity at an early age. As a small child, her nursemaids found her stubbornly independent, and yet lacking the common sense to take care of herself. One remarked, “She would go all day with her laces undone because she could not tie them herself, yet would suffer no one to tie them for her.” Before the age of ten, she had decided to eschew the traditional trainings befitting a girl of her rank, and instead interested herself in handicrafts that were very unlikely to prove useful: pottery, tattooing, the making of perfumes, and the growing and propagation of plants, especially foreign ones.

She did not scruple to absent herself for long hours from supervision. She preferred the woodlands and orchards to her mother’s courtyards and gardens. One would have thought this would produce a hardy and practical child. Nothing could be further from the truth. She seemed to be constantly afflicted with rashes, scrapes, and stings, was frequently lost, and never developed any sensible wariness toward man or beast.

Her education came largely from herself. She mastered reading and ciphering at an early age, and from that time studied any scroll, book, or tablet that came her way with voracious and indiscriminate interest. Tutors were frustrated by her distractible ways and frequent absences that seemed to affect not at all her ability to learn almost anything swiftly and well. Yet the applying of such knowledge interested her not at all. Her head was full of fancies and imaginings, she substituted poetry and music for logic and manners both, she expressed no interest at all in social introductions and coquettish skills.

And yet she married a prince, one who had courted her with a single-minded enthusiasm that was to be the first scandal to befall him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.