[SalaZin]

Hello all!

I've been lurking for the past few months on these forums whenever I'd finish a book, but I had a quick question I was wondering someone may answer.
I only Just started chapter 6, and finished the first POV with Crokus, and was wondering if it was revealed at a previous point, or will be at some point, when Crokus became proficient with knives? I do'nt remember him being shown to know how to use them well in DhG or GOTM. And please, no spoilers past chapter 6 o_o

Thanks!

DJ

[Aptorian]

Some time has passed between Deadhouse Gates and House of Chains. How much I don't recall but he's been training, trying to become the man he thinks Apsalar wants or needs.

You might consider that Apsalar has probably been training with him and she has the muscle memories of the God of Assassins. Hell, she may even be magically boosting him just by being in his presence, although I don't think such a thing is probable.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

He always looked up to Rallick Nom, and Rallick was as assasin, obvioulsy adept with a knife. Then he got in with Apsalar/Sorry who was essentially Cotillion with lady parts; but she too was good with knives. His training with knives obviously happened off-screen sometime between DG and HoC. But it seems again, that the direction that Crokus took, was guided by the master manipulator himself, Shadowthrone.

Quote

He sat down, resting his back against the trunk of a massive cedar that had been thrown up onto this beach – roots and all – and drew out his knives. He practised a sequenced shift of grips, each hand reversing the pattern of the other, and stared down until the weapons – and his fingers – became little more than blurs of motion. Then he lifted his head and studied the sea, its rolling breakers in the distance, the triangular sails skidding along beyond the white line of foam. He made the sequence in his right hand random. Then did the same for his left.

Thirty paces down the beach waited their single-masted runner, its magenta sail reefed, its hull's blue, gold and red paint faint stains in the sunlight. A Korelri craft, paid in debt to a local bookmaker in Kan – for an alley in Kan had been the place where Shadowthrone had sent them, not to the road above the village as he had promised.

The bookmaker had paid the debt in turn to Apsalar and Crokus for a single night's work that had proved, for Crokus, brutally horrifying. It was one thing to practise passes with the blades, to master the deadly dance against ghosts of the imagination, but he had killed two men that night. Granted, they were murderers, in the employ of a man who was making a career out of extortion and terror. Apsalar had shown no compunction in cutting his throat, no qualms at the spray of blood that spotted her gloved hands and forearms.

There had been a local with them, to witness the veracity of the night's work. In the aftermath, as he stood in the doorway and stared down at the three corpses, he'd lifted his head and met Crokus's eyes. Whatever he saw in them had drained the blood from the man's face.

By morning Crokus had acquired a new name. Cutter.

At first he had rejected it. The local had misread all that had been revealed behind the Daru's eyes that night. Nothing fierce. The barrier of shock, fast crumbling to self-condemnation. Murdering killers was still murder, the act like the closing of shackles between them all, joining a line of infinite length, one killer to the next, a procession from which there was no escape. His mind had recoiled from the name, recoiled from all that it signified.

But that had proved a short-lived rectitude. The two murderers had died indeed – at the hands of the man named Cutter. Not Crokus, not the Daru youth, the cut-purse – who had vanished. Vanished, probably never to be seen again.

The delusion held a certain comfort, as cavernous at its core as Apsalar's embrace at night, but welcome all the same.

Cutter would walk her path.

Aye, the Emperor had Dancer, yes? A companion, for a companion was what was needed. Is needed. Now, she has Cutter. Cutter of the Knives, who dances in his chains as if they were weightless threads. Cutter, who, unlike poor Crokus, knows his place, knows his singular task – to guard her back, to match her cold precision in the deadly arts.

And therein resided the final truth. Anyone could become a killer. Anyone at all.

You have to fill in the gaps yourself, but Cutter fled Darujhistan because he wanted something more. Can he be an emo twat at times? Absolutely. But he has one of the more simpler arcs in the entire series, and one of the most rewarding too. We get to watch him grow up and experience all manner of pain and joy. His story is the most basic, and probably the one that most readers, certainly the males, can identify with, and that perhaps is the reason why he gets a bunch of shit. No one likes to have the mirror turned on them.

This post has been edited by Spoilsport Stonny: 14 February 2014 - 02:59 PM

[Abyss]

Along with all the above, back in DG it's stated pretty clearly that Kalam was training him during their travels.
There was also a suggestion that Icarium had trained him a bit.

Regardless of the Iccy factor, Crokus had decent aim and knife skills back in GotM. By HoC he's been trained a bit by Kalam and a lot by Apsalar, which essentially means he's been trained by one of the deadliest assassins out there, and his god.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Yeah I forgot he spent a season of various boat rides with Kalam. Just being near that guy makes one tougher by osmosis.