![]() ![]() He opened the door to my knock-kind, stoop-shouldered, near-sighted John, his fingers stained with ink and his hair standing up in disorder like a coxcomb-and looked perplexed. Instead of going home as any dutiful son would to confess his sins and receive his penance in bruises, I took myself up the stairs, two at a time, to see if John Latimer was in his lodgings. I WAS SO GLAD THAT bright spring afternoon to tell Master Croley what I thought of him that I cared not a jot for the loss of my ‘prenticeship or my father’s inevitable wrath. ![]() But apprenticeships have a way of not surviving contact with my family: my own didn’t last much past the fifteenth anniversary of my christening. There’s still not a way to get the bonds of family dissolved, though-not unless the old drunkard should disown me. But Lactantius’s injuries sufficed even for the guild. Lactantius’s father went to the Cobblers and got the ‘prenticeship dissolved, which isn’t often done. ![]() The boy was his apprentice, Lactantius Presson, and a year older than I. WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN, my father beat a boy almost to death. ![]()
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