Fool's Errand (Tawny Man #1) 49

“I can tell you now as we go, in few words,” he returned as we trudged back to -the cabin. His voice was deep as a man's and the bitterness was a man's, also. “Not well. The harvest was good, but wherever I went, I was last hired, for always they wanted to hire their cousin first, or their cousin's friends. Always I was the stranger, put to the dirtiest and heaviest of the labor. I worked like a man, Tom, but they paid me like a mouse, with crumbs and cut coins. And they were suspicious of me, too. They didn't want me sleeping within their barns, no, nor talking to their daughters. And between jobs, well, I iiad to eat, and all cost far more than I thought it should. I've come home with only a handful more of coins than when I left. I was a fool to leave. I would have done as well to stay home and sell chickens and salt fish.”

The hard words rattled out of him. I said nothing, but let him get all of them said. By then we were at the door. He doused his head in the water barrel I had filled for the garden while I went inside to set out food on the table. He came into the cabin, and as he glanced around, I knew without his saying it that it had grown smaller in his eyes. “It's good to be home,” he said. And in the next breath, he went on, “But I don't know what I'm going to do for an apprentice fee. Hire out another year, I suppose. But by then, some might think me too old to learn well. Already one man I met on the road told me that he had never met a master craftsman who hadn't begun his training before he was twelve. Is that honey?”

“It is.” I put the pot on the table with the bread and the cold meat, and Hap fell to as if he had not eaten for days. I made tea for us, and then sat across the table from my boy, watching him eat. Ravenous as he was, he still fed bits of his meat to the wolf beside his chair. And Nighteyes ate, not with appetite, but both to please the boy and for the sake of sharing meat with a pack member. When the fowl was down to bones with not even enough meat left to make soup, he sat back in his chair with a sigh. Then he leaned forward abruptly, his eager fingers tracing the charging buck on the tabletop. “This is beautiful! When did you learn to carve like this?”

“I didn't. An old friend came by and spent part of his visit decorating the cabin.” I smiled to myself. “When you've a moment, take a look at the rain barrel.”

“An old friend? I didn't think you had any save Starling.”

He did not mean the observation to sting, but it did. His fingers traced again the emblem. Once, FitzChivalry Farseer had worn that charging buck as an embroidered crest. “Oh, I've a few. I just don't hear from them often.”

“Ah. What about new friends? Did Jinna stop in on her way to Buckkeep?”

“She did. She left us a charm to make our garden grow better, as thanks for a night's shelter.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “She stayed the night, then. She's nice, isn't she?”

“Yes, she is.” He waited for me to say more but I refused. He ducked his head and tried to smother a grin in his hand. I reached across the table and cuffed him affectionately. He fended off the mock blow, then suddenly caught my hand in his. His grin ran away from his face to be replaced by anxiety. “Tom, Tom, what am I going to do? I thought it would be easy and it wasn't. And I was willing to work hard for a fair wage, and I was civil and put in a fair day, and still they all treated me poorly. What am I going to do? I can't live here at the edge of nowhere for all my life. I can't!”

“No. You can't.” And in that moment I perceived two things. First, that my isolated lifestyle had ill prepared the boy to make his own way, and second, that this was what Chade must have felt when I had declared that I would not be an assassin anymore. It is strange to think that when you gave a boy what you thought was the best of yourself you actually crippled him. His frantic glance left me feeling small and shamed. I should have done better by him. I would do better by him. I heard myself speak the words before I even knew I had thought them. “I do have old friends at Buckkeep. I can borrow the money for your apprenticeship fee.” My heart lurched at the thought of what form the interest on such a loan might take, but I steeled myself. I would go to Chade first, and if what he asked of me in return was too dear, I would seek out the Fool. It would not be easy to humbly ask to borrow money, but

“You'd do that? For me? But I'm not even really your son.” Hap looked incredulous.

I gripped his hand. “I would do that. Because you're as close to a son as I'm ever likely to get.”

“I'll help you pay the debt, I swear.”