him and walk beside you. It has been so long since we talked, and I could use a friendly ear tonight.’
‘I think I would prefer to be alone tonight, Starling.’
She was silent for a moment. The horse jigged restlessly and she pulled him in too tightly. When she spoke, she did not hide her irritation. ‘Tonight? Why do you say tonight when you mean, “I’d always prefer to be alone rather than with you”? Why do you make excuses? Why don’t you just say that you haven’t forgiven me, that you’ll never forgive me?’
It was true. I hadn’t. But that would have been a stupid thing to tell her. ‘Can’t we just let it go? It doesn’t matter any more,’ I said, and that was true as well.
She snorted. ‘Ah. I see. It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I make one mistake, I fail to tell you one thing that doesn’t really concern you at all, and you decide you can not only never forgive me, but that you will never speak to me again?’ Her fury was building in an astounding way. I stood looking up at her as she ranted. The failing light touched her face indistinctly. She looked older and wearier than I had ever seen her. And angrier. I stood stunned in the flow of her wrath. ‘And why is that, I ask myself? Why does “Tom Badgerlock” dispose of me so easily? Because perhaps I never mattered at all to you, save for one thing. One convenient little thing that I brought right to your door for you, one thing that I thought we shared in friendship and fondness and yes, even love. But you decided you don’t want that from me any more, so you throw all of me aside. You make that the whole of what we shared, and discard me with it. And why? I confess, I’ve given much more thought to it than I should. And I think I’ve found the answer. Is it because you’ve found another place to quench your lusts? Has your new master taught you his Jamaillian ways? Or was I wrong, all those years ago? Perhaps the Fool was truly a man, and you’ve simply gone back to what you preferred all along.’ She jerked her horse’s head again. ‘You disgust me, Fitz, and you shame the Farseer name. I’m glad you’ve given it up. Now that I know what you are, I wish I had never bedded with you. Whose face did you see, all those times when you closed your eyes?’
‘Molly’s, you stupid bitch. Always Molly’s.’ It was not true. I had not played that cheat on her or myself. But it was the most hurtful reply I could think of to insult her. She did not, perhaps, deserve it. And it shamed me that I would use Molly’s name that way. But my festering anger had finally found a target this evening.
She took several deep breaths, as if I had doused her with cold water. Then she laughed shrilly. ‘And no doubt you mouth her name into your pillow as your Lord Golden mounts you. Oh, yes, that I can imagine well. You’re pathetic, Fitz. Pathetic.’
She gave me no chance to strike back, but spurred her horse cruelly and galloped off into the snowy night. For a savage instant, I hoped the beast would stumble and that she would break her neck.
Then, just when I needed that fury most, it deserted me. I was left feeling sick and sad and sorry, alone on the night road. Why had the Fool done this to me? Why? I resumed my trudge down the road.
Yet I did not go to the Stuck Pig. I knew I wouldn’t find Hap or Svanja there. Instead I went to the Dog and Whistle, an ancient tavern I had once frequented with Molly. I sat in the corner and watched patrons come and go and drank two tankards of ale. It was good ale, far better than I’d been able to afford when Molly and I last sat here. I drank and I remembered her. She, at least, had loved me true. Yet comfort in those memories trickled away. I tried to remember what it was to be fifteen years old and in love and so terribly certain that love conveyed wisdom and shaped fate. I recalled it too well, and my thoughts spun aside to Hap’s situation. I asked myself, once I had lain with Molly, could anyone have said anything to persuade me that it was not both my right and my destiny to do so? I doubted it. The best thing, I concluded a tankard later, would have been not to have allowed Hap to meet Svanja in the first place. And Jinna had warned me of that, and I hadn’t paid attention. Just as Burrich and Patience had once warned me not to begin with Molly. They’d been right. I should have admitted that a long time ago. I would have told them that, that very minute, if I could have.
And the wisdom of three tankards of ale after a sleepless night and a long day of unsettling news persuaded me that the best thing to do would be to go to Jinna and tell her that she had been right. Somehow, that would make things better. The fuzziness of why that would be so did not dissuade me. I set out for her door through the quiet night.
The snow had stopped falling. It was a clean blanket, mostly smooth, over Buckkeep Town. It draped eaves and gentled the rutted streets, hiding all sins. My boots scrunched through it as I walked the quiet streets. I nearly came to my senses when I reached Jinna’s door, but I knocked anyway. Perhaps I just needed a friend, any kind of a friend, that badly.
I heard the thud of the cat leaping from her lap, and then her footsteps. She peered out of the top half of her door. ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me. Tom Badgerlock.’
She shut the top half of the door. It seemed like a long time before she unlatched the whole door and opened it to me. ‘Come in,’ she said, but her voice sounded as if she didn’t care if I did or didn’t.
I stood outside in the snow. ‘I don’t need to come in. I just wanted to tell you that you were right.’
She peered at me. ‘And you are drunk. Come in, Tom Badgerlock. I’ve no wish to let the night cold into my house.’
And so I went in instead. Fennel had already claimed her warm spot in her chair, but he sat up to look at me disapprovingly. Fish?
No fish. Sorry.
‘Sorry’ is not fish. What good is ‘sorry’? He curled up again, and hid his face in his tail.
I admitted it. ‘Sorry isn’t much good, but it’s all I have to offer.’
Jinna looked at me grimly. ‘Well, it’s far more than anything else you’ve given me lately.’
I stood with the snow from my boots melting on her floor. The fire crackled. ‘You were right about Hap. I should have intervened a lot sooner and I didn’t. I should have listened to you.’
After a time longer she said, ‘Do you want to sit down for a while? I don’t think you should try to walk back to the castle just now.’
‘I don’t think I’m that drunk!’ I scoffed.
‘I don’t think you’re sober enough to know how drunk you are,’ she replied. And while I was trying to unravel that, she said, ‘Take your cloak off and sit down.’ Then she had to move her knitting off one chair and the cat off the other, and then we both sat down.
For a short time we both just looked into her fire. Then she said, ‘There’s something you should know about Svanja’s father.’
I met her eyes unwillingly.
‘He’s a lot like you,’ she said quietly. ‘It takes some time for him to get his temper up. Right now, he just feels grief over what his daughter is doing. But as it becomes common talk in town, there will be men who will goad him about it. Grief will change to shame, and not long after that, to fury. But it won’t be against Svanja that he vents it. He’ll go after Hap, as the culprit who has deceived and seduced his daughter. By then, he’ll be righteous as well as angry. And he is strong as a bull.’
When I sat silent, she added, ‘I told Hap this.’ Fennel came to her and wafted up into her lap, displacing her knitting. She petted him absently.
‘What did Hap say?’
She made a disgusted sound. ‘That he wasn’t afraid. I told him that had nothing to do with it. And that sometimes being stupid and being not afraid were two twigs of the same bush.’
‘That pleased him, no doubt.’
‘He went out. I haven’t seen him since.’
I sighed. I was just starting to get warm. ‘How long ago?’
She