Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

Yes. That was true, and I was grateful to him for that. But not grateful that she would always see his face when she heard the word ‘Papa’. ‘You asked me for those words,’ I said, and then heard how harsh I sounded.

      ‘And just like the wishes granted in old tales, you gave me what I wanted and it has broken my heart.’

      ‘What happened?’ I asked unwillingly.

      She didn’t want to tell me, and yet she did. ‘I told him I’d had a dream, and that in the dream, a wolf with porcupine quills in his nose had promised to watch over Swift and bring him safely home to us. And I said the words you gave me. “As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you.”’

      ‘And?’

      ‘My mother was kneading bread, and she told me not to speak of Swift if all I could talk was moonshine and foolishness. But her back was to the table where I sat with my father. She did not see his eyes widen at my words. For a time, he just stared at me, with his eyes showing the whites all around them. Then he fell from the chair to the floor and lay there, staring like a corpse. I thought he was struck dead. My brothers and I carried him to his bed, fearing the worst. My mother was terrified, demanding of him where he hurt. But he did not answer. He only put his hands over his eyes, curled up like a beaten child and began to weep.

      ‘He wept all today, and did not say a word to any of us. As night fell, I heard him get up. I came to the edge of my loft and looked down. He was dressed for travel. My mother was holding to his arm, begging him not to go out. But he said to her, “Woman, you’ve no idea what we have done, and I haven’t the courage to tell you. I’m a coward. I’ve always been a coward.” Then he shook her off and left.’

      For a terrible flashing instant, I imagined Molly spurned and abandoned. It was devastating.

      ‘Where did he go?’ I managed to ask her.

      ‘I suspect he’s coming to you. Wherever you are.’ Her words were curt, and yet I heard hope in them, hope that someone knew where her father was bound and why. I had to take it from her.

      ‘That cannot be. But I think I know where he has gone, and I think he will come back to you soon.’ Buckkeep, I thought to myself. Burrich was a direct man. He’d go to Buckkeep, hoping to corner Chade and question him. He’d get Kettricken instead. And she would tell him. Just as she had told Dutiful who I really was. Because she believed in telling people the truth, even if it hurt them.

      While I was still pondering that scene, Nettle spoke again. ‘What have I done?’ she asked me. It was not a rhetorical question. ‘I thought I was so clever. I thought I could bargain with you, and get my brother safely home. Instead … what have I done? What are you? Do you wish us ill? Do you hate my father?’ Then, with even more dread she asked, ‘Is my brother in your power somehow?’

      ‘Please don’t fear me. You have no reason to fear me,’ I said hastily, and then wondered if it was true. ‘Swift is safe, and I promise I will do all in my power to bring him home to you as soon as I can.’ I paused, wondering what I could safely tell her. She was no fool, this daughter of mine. Too many hints and she’d unravel the whole mystery. Like as not, then I’d lose her forever. ‘I knew your father, a long time ago. We were close. But I made decisions that went against his rules, and so we parted. For a long time, he has believed I was dead. With your words, he knows I am not. And because I never came back to him, he now believes he did me a great wrong. He didn’t. But if you know your father at all, you will know that it is what he believes in that regard that will drive him.’

      ‘You knew my father a long time ago? Did you know my mother then, too?’

      ‘I knew him long before you were born.’ Not quite a lie, but a deception nonetheless. I let her mislead herself.

      ‘And so my words meant nothing to my mother,’ Nettle softly concluded after a moment.

      ‘Yes,’ I confirmed. Then, gingerly I asked, ‘Is she all right?’

      ‘Of course not!’ I felt her impatience with my stupidity. ‘She stood outside the house and shouted after him when he left, and then ranted to all of us that she never should have married such a stiff-necked man. A dozen times she asked me what I said, and a dozen times I told her of my “dream”. I came so close to telling her all I knew of you. But that would not have helped, would it? For she never knew you.’

      For one chill instant, I saw it through Nettle’s eyes. Molly stood in the road. In her struggle to restrain Burrich, her hair had come loose. It curled as it ever had, brushing against her shoulders as she shook her fist after him. Her youngest son, little more than six, clutched at her skirts, sobbing in terror at this wild spectacle of his father abandoning his mother. The sun was setting, tingeing the landscape with blood. ‘You blind old fool!’ Molly shrieked after her husband, and the flung words rattled against me like stones. ‘You’ll be lost or robbed! You’ll never come home to us!’ But the fading clatter of galloping hooves was her only reply.

      Then Nettle turned away from the scalding memory of it, and I found we were no longer on the hill with the melted tower. Instead, we were in a loft. My wolf ears on top of my head nearly brushed the low rafters. She was sitting up in her bed, her knees clutched to her chest. Beyond the curtain that screened us from the rest of the attic, I could hear her brothers breathing. One shifted in his sleep and cried out restlessly. No one dreamed peacefully in this house tonight.

      I desperately wanted to beg her to say no word of me to Molly. I dared not, for then she would be certain that I lied. I wondered how strongly she already suspected a link between her mother and myself. I did not answer her directly. ‘I don’t think your father will be gone long. When he returns home, will you tell me, to put my mind at rest?’

      ‘If he comes home,’ she said in a low voice, and I suddenly knew that Molly had voiced aloud the family’s very real fears. Now Nettle spoke reluctantly, as if speaking the truth made it more real. ‘He has already been robbed and beaten once when he was travelling alone seeking for Swift. He has never admitted it to us, but we all know that is what befell him. Nevertheless, he has once more set out alone.’

      ‘That’s Burrich,’ I said. I dared not voice aloud what I hoped in my heart: that he had ridden a horse that he knew well. Although he would never use his Wit to speak to his mount, that did not prevent the animals he worked with from communicating with him.

      ‘That’s my father,’ she agreed, both with pride and sorrow. And then the walls of the room began to run like inked letters when tears fall on them. She was the last sight to fade from my dream. When I came to myself, I was staring up at a darkened corner of the Prince’s cabin, seeing nothing.

      In the tedious days and nights that followed, Thick’s condition changed little, for better or worse. He would rally for a day and a night, and then slip back into fever and coughing. His real illness had chased away his fear of seasickness, but there was no comfort for me in that. More than once, I sought Nettle’s aid in banishing Thick’s fever-dreams before they could unsettle the crew. Sailors are a superstitious lot. Under Thick’s influence, they shared a nightmare, and when they compared their night’s recollections, decided it was a warning from the gods. It only happened once, but was nearly enough to set off a mutiny.

      I worked more closely and more often on Skill-dreams with Nettle than I desired. She did not speak of Burrich and I did not ask, though I know we both counted the days that he had been gone. I knew that if she had had tidings of him, she would share them. His absence in her life left a place for me. Unwillingly, I felt our bond grow stronger, until I carried a constant awareness of her with me at all times. She taught me, without realizing, how to slip behind Thick’s dreams and manipulate them, gently guiding them into consoling images. I could not do it as well as she did. Mine was more a suggestion to him, while she simply set the dream right.

      Twice I felt Chade observing us. It grated on me, but there was nothing I could do about it since to acknowledge him would have made Nettle aware of him as well. Yet, in ignoring him, I profited as well,