Assassin's Apprentice

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, animal death, and suicidal ideation.

“I remember that first night well, the warmth of the hounds, the prickling straw, and even the sleep that finally came as the pup cuddled close beside me. I drifted into his mind and shared his dim dreams of an endless chase, pursuing a quarry I never saw, but whose hot scent dragged me onward through nettle, bramble, and scree.”

This passage provides a clear example of the first-person narration and diction of the novel, displaying a deep interiority through the access to Fitz’s dreams. The novel reveals what the Wit is as Fitz discovers it, and the idea of sharing a mind with a puppy is treated as naturally as Fitz himself experiences it, creating a tone of realism that grounds the fantasy elements in the story. Additionally, the sensory imagery in this passage builds out the way that Fitz sees the world through texture, color, scent, and sensation.

“‘You don’t speak like a child,’ he observed suddenly. ‘But I’ve heard that was the way of it, with those who had the old Wit. That from the beginning, they were never truly children. They always knew too much, and as they got older they knew even more. That was why it was never accounted a crime, in the old days, to hunt them down and burn them.’”

Burrich’s words in this passage allude to myths of changelings, or other children stolen by the fairies, in varying world mythologies, particularly Celtic. This passage emphasizes the idea that the Wit makes Fitz less of a child and therefore undeserving of being protected and loved, contextualizing his treatment—and adultification—for the rest of the novel, even if such treatment is unintentional. With Burrich’s casual talk of “hunt[ing] them down and burn[ing] them,” however, the novel also introduces an implicit threat behind this adultification.