Golden Fool (78 page)

“I’ve no idea what you are talking about. And I was just about to seek my bed. So. Your business here, Badgerlock?”

“Be angry with me if you wish. I suppose I deserve it. Be whatever you have to be with me. But stop this charade and be yourself. That’s all I ask.”

He stood silent for a moment, looking at me with haughty disapproval. And then he came to take the other chair. He poured himself more brandy without offering me any. I could smell that it was the apricot one that we had shared in my cabin less than a year ago. He sipped it and then observed, “Be myself. And who would that be?” He set down the glass, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms on his chest.

“I don’t know. I wish you were the Fool,” I said quietly. “But I think we have come too far to go back to that pretense. Yet, if we could, I would. Willingly.” I looked away from him. I kicked at the end of a hearth log, pushing it farther into the fire and waking new flames in a gust of sparks. “When I think of you now, I do not even know how to name you to myself. You are not Lord Golden to me. You never truly were. Yet you are not the Fool anymore, either.” I steeled myself as the words came to me, unplanned but obvious. How could the truth be so difficult to say?

For a teetering instant, I feared he would misunderstand my words. Then I knew that he would know exactly what I meant by them. For years, he had shown that he understood my feelings, in the silences he kept. Before we parted company, I had to repair, somehow, the rift between us. The words were the only tool I had. They echoed of the old magic, of the power one gained when one knew someone’s true name. I was determined. And yet, the utterance still came awkward to my tongue.

“You said once that I might call you ‘Beloved,’ if I no longer wished to call you ‘Fool.’ ” I took a breath. “Beloved, I have missed your company.”

He lifted a hand and covered his mouth. Then he disguised the gesture by rubbing his chin as if he thought something through carefully. I do not know what expression he hid behind his palm. When he dropped his hand from his face, he was smiling wryly. “Don’t you think that might cause some talk about the keep?”

I let his comment pass for I had no answer to it. He had spoken to me in the Fool’s mocking voice. Even as it soothed my heart, I had to wonder if it was a sham for my benefit. Did he show me what I wished to see, or what he was?

“Well.” He sighed. “I suppose that if you were going to have an appropriate name for me, it would still be Fool. So let us leave it at that, Fitzy. To you, I am the Fool.” He looked into the fire and laughed softly. “It balances, I suppose. Whatever is to come for us, I will always have these words to recall now.” He looked at me and nodded gravely, as if thanking me for returning something precious to him.

There were so many things I wanted to discuss with him. I wanted to review the Prince’s mission and talk about Web and ask him why he now gambled so much and what his wild extravagances meant. But I suddenly wanted to add no more words to what we had said tonight. As he had said, it balanced now. It was a hovering scale between us; I would chance no word that might tip it awry again. I nodded to him and rose slowly. When I reached the door, I said quietly, “Then, good night, Fool.” I opened the door and went out into the corridor.

“Good night, beloved,” he said from his fireside chair. I shut the door softly behind myself.

epilogue

The hand that once wielded both sword and axe now aches after an evening of the quill. When I wipe the tip of one clean, I often wonder how many buckets of ink I have used in a lifetime. How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know.

I used to doubt the Fool when he told me that all of time was a great circuit, and that we are ever doomed to repeat what has been done before. But the older I get, the more I see it is so. I thought then that he meant one great circle entrapped all of us. Instead, I think we are born into our circuits. Like a colt on the end of a training line, we trot in the circular path ordained for us. We go faster, we slow down, we halt on command, and we begin again. And each time we think the circle is something new.

My father’s raising was given over, all those many years ago, to my grandfather’s half-brother, Chade. In his turn, my father gave me over to his right-hand man to rear. And when I became a father, I trusted that the same hand could best raise my daughter in safety. Instead, I took in another man’s son and made Hap mine. Prince Dutiful, my son and yet not mine, also came to be my student. And in time, Burrich’s own son came to me, to learn from me that which his own father would not teach him.

Each circle spins off a circle of its own. Each one seems a new thing but in truth it is not. It is just our most recent attempt to correct old errors, to undo old wrongs done to us, and to make up for things we have neglected. In each cycle, we may correct old errors, but I think we make as many new ones. Yet what is our alternative? To commit the same old errors again? Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.

bantam books
BY ROBIN HOBB

THE FARSEER
ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE

THE FARSEER
ROYAL ASSASSIN

THE FARSEER
ASSASSIN’S QUEST

THE LIVESHIP TRADERS
SHIP OF MAGIC

THE LIVESHIP TRADERS
MAD SHIP

THE LIVESHIP TRADERS
SHIP OF DESTINY

THE TAWNY MAN
FOOL’S ERRAND

THE TAWNY MAN
GOLDEN FOOL

GOLDEN FOOL: BOOK II OF THE TAWNY MAN

A Bantam Spectra Book / January 2003

SPECTRA
and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2003 by Robin Hobb

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hobb, Robin.
Golden fool / Robin Hobb.
p. cm.—(Book 2 of the Tawny man)

I. Title.

PS3558.O33636 G65 2003
813’.54—dc21
2002071740

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Random House, New York, New York.

eISBN: 978-0-553-89720-3

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