Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

course. He seemed almost surprised that I had asked.

      But then, sometimes my prince trusted too easily. Please let Chade know.

      I felt Dutiful’s agreement. I spoke aloud to Web, at the end of my stretch. ‘Thank you. I’ll take you up on your offer, very gratefully.’

      I watched him settle himself carefully beside Thick and take the smallest sea-pipes I’d ever seen from inside his shirt. Sea-pipes are probably the most common musical instrument in any fleet, for they withstand both bad weather and careless handling. It takes little to learn to play a simple tune on them, yet a talented player can entertain like a Buckkeep minstrel with them. I wasn’t surprised to see them in Web’s hands. He’d been a fisherman; he probably still was, in many ways.

      He waved me away. As I departed, I heard a breathy sigh of music. He was playing, very softly, a child’s tune on his pipes. Had he instinctively known that might soothe Thick? I wondered why I hadn’t thought of music as a way to comfort him. I sighed. I was becoming too set in my ways. I needed to remember how to be flexible.

      I went to the galley in the hope of begging something hot to eat. Instead I got hard bread and a piece of cheese no bigger than two fingers. The cook let me know I could consider myself fortunate for being allowed that. She didn’t have food to waste, she didn’t, not aboard this top-heavy, over-populated tub. I had hoped for wash water, just enough to splash the salt from my hands and face, but she told me I hadn’t a prayer of that. I’d had my share for the day, hadn’t I? I should take what I was issued and be happy with it. Guardsmen. No idea what life aboard a vessel required of a man in self-discipline.

      I retreated from her sharp tongue. I longed to stay above decks to eat, but I was out of my territory there, and the sailors were in a mood to prove it to me. So I went below, down to where the rest of the guard snored and muttered and played cards by the swinging light of a lantern. Our days at sea had not improved the smell of our quarters. I found that Riddle had not exaggerated the ill humour of the men. The comments of one man on ‘the returning nursemaid’ would have been enough justification for a fight if I’d wanted one. I didn’t, and managed to shed his insults, eat my food hastily and dig my blanket out of my sea chest. Finding a place to stretch out was impossible. Prone guardsmen littered the floor. I curled up in their midst. I would have preferred to sleep with my back to a wall, but there was no hope of that. I eased off my boots and loosened my belt. The man next to me muttered nastily and rolled over as I tried to settle on the deck and cover most of myself with my blanket. I closed my eyes and breathed out, reaching desperately for unconsciousness, grateful for the opportunity to close my eyes and sleep. At least in my dreams I could escape this nightmare.

      But as I crossed the dim territory between wakefulness and sleep, I recognized that perhaps I held the solution to my problems. Instead of wallowing my way into full sleep, I slid sideways through it, seeking Nettle.

      My task was harder than I had expected. Thick’s music was here, and finding my way through it was like blundering through brambles in a mist. No sooner did I think of that than the sounds sprouted tendrils and thorns. Music should not hurt a man, but this did. I staggered through a fog of sickness, hunger and thirst, my spine tight with cold and my head pounding with the discordant music that snatched and dragged at me. After a time I halted. ‘It’s a dream,’ I said to myself, and the brambles writhed mockingly at my words. As I stood still, pondering my situation, they began to wrap around my legs. ‘It’s a dream,’ I said again. ‘It can’t hurt me.’ But my words did not prevail. I felt the thorns bite through my leggings into my flesh as I staggered forward. They tightened their grip and held me fast.

      I halted again, fighting for calm. What had begun as Thick’s Skill-suggestion was now my own nightmare. I straightened up against the weight of the thorny vines trying to pull me down, reached to my hip and drew Verity’s sword. I slashed at the brambles and they gave way, wriggling away like severed snakes. Encouraged, I gave the sword a blade of flame that singed the writhing plants and lit my way through the encroaching fog. ‘Go uphill,’ I told myself. ‘Only the valleys are full of mist. The hilltops will be clean and bare.’ And it was so.

      When I finally struggled clear of Thick’s Skill-fog, I found myself at the edges of Nettle’s dream. I stood for a time staring up at a glass tower on the hilltop above me. I recognized the tale. The hillside above me was littered with tangling threads. As I waded in, they clung like a spider’s web. I knew that Nettle was aware of me. Nonetheless, she left me to my own devices, and I floundered through the ankle-deep tangle that represented all the broken promises her false lovers had made to the princess. In the old tale, only a truehearted man could tread such a path without falling.

      In the dream, I had become the wolf. All four of my legs were soon bound by the clinging stuff and I must needs stop and chew myself clear of it. For some reason, the thread tasted of anise, a pleasant enough flavour in moderation, but choking by the mouthful. When I finally reached the glass tower my chest was wet and my jaws dripped saliva. I gave myself a shake, droplets flying, and then asked her, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me to come up?’

      She did not reply. She leaned on the parapet of her balcony and stared out over the countryside. I looked behind me, down to where the brambles waved above the banked fog in the deep valleys. Was the fog creeping closer? When Nettle continued to ignore me, I trotted around the base of the tower. In the old tale, there was no door, and Nettle had recreated it faithfully. Did that mean she had had a lover who had been faithless to her? My heart turned over in me and for a moment I forgot the purpose of my visit. When I had circled the tower, I sat down on my haunches and looked up at the figure on the balcony. ‘Who has betrayed you?’ I asked her.

      She continued to stare out and I thought she would not answer. But then, without looking down at me, she replied, ‘Everyone. Go away.’

      ‘How can I help you if I go away?’

      ‘You can’t help me. You’ve told me that often enough. So you might as well just go away and leave me alone. Like everyone else.’

      ‘Who has gone away and left you alone?’

      That brought a furious glare. She spoke in a low voice full of hurt. ‘I don’t know why I thought you might remember! My brother, for one. My brother Swift, who you said would soon be coming home to us. Well, he hasn’t! And then my stupid father decided to go look for him. As if a man with fogged eyes can go look for anything! And we told him not to go, but he did. And something happened, we don’t know what, but his horse came home without him. So I went out on my horse, despite my mother shrieking at me that I wasn’t to leave, and I tracked his horse’s trail back and found Papa by the side of the road, bruised and bloody and trying to crawl home dragging one leg. So I brought him home, and then my mother scolded me again for disobeying her. And now my father is in bed and all he does is lie there and stare at the wall and not speak to anyone. My mother forbade any of us from bringing him any brandy. So he won’t talk to us or tell us what happened. Which makes my mother furious at all of us. As if it were my fault.’

      Halfway through this tirade, her tears had begun to stream down her face. They dripped from her chin and ran over her hands and trickled down the wall of the tower. Slowly they solidified into opal strands of misery. I reared up on my hind legs and clawed at them, but they were too smooth and too shallow for me to gain any purchase. I sat down again. I felt hollow and old. I tried to tell myself that the misery in Molly’s home had nothing to do with me, that I had not caused it and could not cure it. And yet, the roots of it ran deep, did they not?

      After a time, she looked down at me and laughed bitterly. ‘Well, Shadow Wolf? Aren’t you going to say you can’t help me with that? Isn’t that what you always say?’ When I could think of no reply, she added in an accusing tone, ‘I don’t know why I even speak to you. You lied to me. You said my brother was coming home.’

      ‘I thought he was,’ I replied, finding words at last. ‘I went to him and I told him to go home. I thought he had.’

      ‘Well, perhaps he tried to. Perhaps he started this way, and was killed by robbers, or fell in a river and drowned. I don’t suppose you ever considered