‘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 nodded, forbearing to make any comment. I took the purse I’d prepared out of my jerkin and slipped it to him. ‘Don’t carry it all about with you, but only what you think you’d need that day. Do you have a safe place to put the rest?’
‘Thank you, Tom.’ He took it gravely, tucking it inside his shirt. ‘I do. At least, Svanja does. I’ll have her keep it for me.’
It took every bit of control and deception that I’d ever learned to keep my misgivings from showing in my eyes or on my face. I nodded as if I had no doubt all would be well. Then I embraced him briefly as he bid me to be careful on my journey, and we parted.
I found I did not want to return to Buckkeep Castle yet. It had been an unsettling day, between Web’s words and Hap’s news. And the food I had eaten at the Stuck Pig had more dismayed than satisfied my belly. I suspected it would not stay with me long. So I turned a different way from Hap lest he think I followed him and wandered for a time through the streets of Buckkeep. Restlessness vied with loneliness. I found myself passing the tailor shop that had once been a chandlery where Molly had worked. I shook my head at myself and deliberately set out for the docks. I wandered up and down them for a time, tallying to myself how many Out Island ships, how many from Bingtown or Jamaillia and beyond, and how many were our own vessels. The docks were longer and more crowded than my boyhood recollection of them, and the number of foreign ships was equal to our own. As I passed a vessel, I heard an Outislander shout a gruff jest to his fellows, and their raucous replies. I was pleased with myself that I could follow their words.
The ships that would bear us to the Out Islands were tied up at the main docks. I slowed to stare up at their bare rigging. The loading of them had ceased for the night, but men kept watch on their decks by lantern light. The ships looked large now; I knew how small they would become after a few days at sea. In addition to the ship that would carry the Prince and his selected entourage, there were three ships that would carry lesser nobles and their baggage, and a cargo of gifts and trade items. The ship Prince Dutiful would sail on was called the Maiden’s Chance. She was an older ship, proven swift and seaworthy. Now that she had been scrubbed and her paint and canvas completely renewed, she looked like a new creation. As a merchant vessel, built for carrying cargo, speed had been traded for capacity and stability: her hull was as rounded as the belly of a pregnant sow. Her forecastle had been enlarged to provide
