Golden Fool
A scowl darkened his face. His stubbornness, so rarely woken, mastered him now. He took several breaths, each deeper than the last, and then the words exploded from him. “If he throws her out, I’ll take her in, and do whatever I must to support her. If he beats her, I’ll kill him. And if her friends turn on her, then they were never truly her friends anyway. Don’t worry about it, Tom Badgerlock. It’s my consideration now.” He bit off each of his final words to me, as if somehow I had betrayed him just by stating my concerns. He turned away from me. “I’m a man now. I can make my own decisions and my own way. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get to my work. I’m sure Master Gindast is waiting for his turn to lecture me on responsibility.”
“Hap.” I spoke the word sharply. When the boy turned back to me, startled at the harshness in my tone, I forced out the rest of what I knew I had to say. “Making love to a girl does not make you a man. You have no right to do that; not until you both can declare yourself partners publicly, and provide for any children that come along. You should not see her again, Hap. Not like that. If you don’t go soon to meet her father and face him squarely, you’ll never be able to stand before him as a man in his eyes. And—”
I stood a time longer in the snow. I was not calm. On the contrary, anger flamed in me that seemed enough to warm all winter away from the land. My fists were clenched at my sides. I think it was the first time that I had ever felt deeply furious with Hap, to the point where I longed to beat some sense into him if he would not listen to reason. I pictured myself barging into the shop and dragging him out, forcing him to confront what he was doing.
By the time I reached Buckkeep and had ascended to the Skill tower, I had walked away the fierceness of my anger. Yet the sick, dull weight of it lingered, poisoning my day. I was almost relieved to find that Dutiful had given up on me and left. Only a simple underlining of the word had altered my note. The boy was learning to be subtle. Perhaps at least with this young man I could succeed in turning him aside from the errors of the past. That errant thought only made me feel cowardly. Was I surrendering Hap then, abandoning him to his own poor judgment? No, I decided, I was not. But that decision put me no closer to knowing what to do about it.
The news startled me. Usually Six Duchies contacts with Bingtown were contacts between individual merchants and traders, not their ruling council treating with the Farseers. I tried to recall if the city-state had ever sent us ambassadors when Shrewd was king, then gave it up. I had not been privy to such matters when I was a lad. I took a seat at the table. “And you are to be there?”