Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

she’ll tell him that she loves me and is mine now,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Or I will.’ For a time we walked in silence. He did not relax under my hand but at least he did not shrug it off. ‘You think I’m foolish,’ he said at last as we turned down the street that went past the Stuck Pig. ‘You think she is toying with me, and that when Reften comes home, she will again throw me aside.’

      I tried to make my voice say the hard words softly. ‘That does seem possible to me.’

      He sighed and his shoulder slouched under my hand. ‘To me, also. But what am I to do, Tom? I love her. Svanja and no other. She is the other half of me, and when we are together, we make a whole that I cannot doubt. Walking with you now and telling you of it, I sound gullible, even to myself. So I voice doubts, like your own. But when I am with her and she looks into my eyes, I know she is telling me the truth.’

      We tramped a bit farther in silence. Around us, the town was changing its pace, relaxing from the day’s labours into a time for shared meals and family companionship. Tradesmen were closing their shutters for the evening. Smells of cooking wafted out of homes. Taverns beckoned to such as Hap and me. I wished vainly that we were simply going to sit down to a hearty meal together. I had thought him in safe waters, and had comforted myself with that whenever I thought of leaving Buckkeep. I asked a question both inevitable and foolish. ‘Is there any chance that you could stop seeing her for a time?’

      ‘No.’ He answered without even drawing breath. He looked ahead as he spoke. ‘I can’t, Tom. I can no more put her aside than I could give up breath or water or food.’

      Then I spoke my fear honestly. ‘I worry that while I am gone, you will get into trouble with this, Hap. Not just a fist-fight with Reften over the girl, though that would be bad enough. Master Hartshorn has no fondness for either of us. If he believes you have compromised his daughter, he may seek revenge on you.’

      ‘I can deal with her father,’ he said gruffly, and I felt his shoulders stiffen again.

      ‘How? Take a beating from him? Or beat him insensible? Remember, I’ve fought him, Hap. He’ll neither cry for mercy, nor grant it. If the City Guard had not intervened, our fight would have continued until one of us was unconscious, or dead. Yet even if it doesn’t come to that, there are other things he could do. He could go to Gindast and complain that his apprentice lacks morality. Gindast would take that seriously, would he not? From what you have said, your master is not well pleased with you just now. He could turn you out. Or Hartshorn could simply turn his own daughter out into the streets. Then what?’

      ‘Then I take her in,’ Hap replied grimly. ‘And I care for her.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Somehow. I don’t know how, I just know that I would!’ The anger in his furious reply was not for me, but for himself, that he could not think of a way to refute the question. I judged that it was a good time to hold silence. My boy could not be dissuaded from his path. If I sought to do so, he’d only turn away from me to pursue her. We walked on, and as we drew closer to the Stuck Pig, I had to ask, ‘You don’t meet her openly, do you?’

      ‘No,’ he answered reluctantly. ‘I walk past her house. She watches for me, but we pretend not to notice one another. But if she sees me, she makes an excuse of some kind and slips out later in the evening to meet me.’

      ‘At the Stuck Pig?’

      ‘No, of course not. There’s a place we discovered, where we can be alone.’

      And so I felt a part of their deception as I walked with Hap past Svanja’s house. I hadn’t known where she lived until now. As we passed the cottage, Svanja was sitting on the step with a small boy. I hadn’t realized that she had siblings. She immediately rose and went inside with the child, as if snubbing Hap and me. We walked on to the Stuck Pig.

      I was reluctant to enter, but Hap went ahead of me and so I followed. The innkeeper gave us a brusque nod. I was surprised he didn’t order me out. The last time I’d been there, I’d brawled with Hartshorn and the City Guard had been called. Perhaps that was not so unusual an event there. From the way the inn-boy greeted Hap, he’d become a regular. He took a corner table as if it were his accustomed place. I set out coin on the table, and in response we soon had two mugs of beer and two plates of indifferent fish stew. The bread that came with it was hard. Hap didn’t appear to notice. We spoke little as we ate, and I sensed him tracking time, estimating how long it would take Svanja to make an excuse and then slip off to their meeting place.

      ‘I was minded to give Gindast some money to hold for you, so that you’d have funds of your own as you needed them while I’m gone.’

      Hap shook his head, mouth full. A moment later he said quietly, ‘That wouldn’t work. Because if he was displeased with me for any reason, he’d withhold it.’

      ‘And you expect your master to be displeased with you?’

      For a time he didn’t answer. Then he said, ‘He thinks he needs to regulate me as if I were ten years old. My evenings should be my own, to do as I please. You’ve paid for my apprenticeship, and I do my work during the day. That should be all that concerns him. But no, he would have me sit about with the other apprentices, mending socks until his wife shouts at us to stop wasting candles and go to sleep. I don’t need that sort of supervision, and I won’t tolerate it.’

      ‘I see.’ We ate more insipid food in silence. I struggled with a decision. Hap was too proud to ask me to give the money to him directly. I could refuse him to express my disapproval. Certainly I didn’t like what he was doing. I foresaw it would lead him to trouble … and if that trouble came while I was gone, he might need money to extricate himself. Certainly I’d seen enough of the Buckkeep Town gaol to know I didn’t want my boy to spend time there, unable to pay a fine. Yet if I left him money, would I not perhaps be giving him enough rope to hang himself? Would it all go for gifts to impress his sweetheart and tavern meals and drink? It was possible.

      It came down to this: did I trust this boy that I’d raised for the last seven years? He had already set aside much of what I had taught him. Yet so Burrich would have said of me at that age, if he had known how much I used the Wit. So would Chade have said, if he’d known of my private excursions into town. Yet here I sat, very much still the man they had made me. So much so that I would not show a purse of coins in a tavern so ill-reputed as this one. ‘Then I shall simply give you the money and trust you to be wise with it,’ I said quietly.

      Hap’s face lit up, and I knew it was for the trust I offered him, not the coins. ‘Thank you, Tom. I’ll be careful with it.’

      After that, our meal went more pleasantly. We spoke of my upcoming trip. He asked how long I would be gone. I told him I didn’t know. Hap asked if my journey would be dangerous. All had heard that the Prince was setting forth to kill a dragon in the Narcheska’s honour. I mildly ridiculed the idea that we would find any such beast in the ice of the Out Islands. And I told him, truthfully, that I expected to be bored and uncomfortable for much of the journey, but not at risk. I was, after all, only a minor guardsman, honoured to be chosen to accompany the Prince. Doubtless I would spend most of my time waiting for someone to tell me what to do. We laughed together over that, and I hoped he had taken my point; that obeying one’s superior was not a childish limit, but a duty that any man could expect in his life. But if he saw it in that light, he made no mention of it.

      We did not linger over our meal. The food didn’t warrant it and I sensed that Hap was anticipating his assignation with Svanja. Whenever I thought of it, my heart sank, but I knew there was no turning him aside from it. So when our hasty meal was finished, we pushed away our greasy plates and left the Stuck Pig. We walked together for a short time, watching evening creep up on Buckkeep Town. When I was a boy, the streets would have been near empty at this hour. But Buckkeep Town had grown and the duskier trades of the city had increased. At a well-traversed crossroad women lingered on the streets, walking slowly. They eyed the passing men, speaking desultorily to one another as they waited to be approached. There Hap halted. ‘I have to go now,’ he said quietly.

      I