Golden Fool

Incredulous, I lifted myself a little from her so that I could look down into her eyes. She blinked up at me, an odd smile on her face. “I’ve never been with a Witted one, before this,” she confided. She drew another, deeper breath. “I’ve heard other women speak of it. That such men are more . . .” She paused, seeking for a word.

“Animal?” I suggested. The word as I spoke it was an insult.

Her eyes widened, and then she laughed uncomfortably. “That isn’t what I was going to say, Tom. You shouldn’t take insults to yourself where a compliment is intended. Untamed, was what I was going to say. Natural, as an animal is natural, with no thought of what any other may think of his ways.”

“Oh.” I could say no more than that. I wondered abruptly what I was to her. A novelty? A forbidden indulgence with something not quite fully human? It was unnerving to wonder if she saw me as bestial and strange. Did our magics set us so far apart in her mind?

Then she pulled me down upon her breasts again, and kissed the side of my neck. “Stop thinking,” she warned me, and I did.

Afterward, she dozed briefly beside me, my arm around her and her head pillowed on my shoulder. I judged that I had acquitted myself well. But as I watched the sunlight’s passage on the wall, I realized it had been a performance. Neither of us had spoken of love. It had simply been a thing we had done together, something that felt good, something I was reasonably competent at. Yet if our first coupling had left her unsatisfied, the later ones left me feeling incomplete in a deeper way. With a sharpness I had not felt in years, I suddenly longed for Molly, and how simple, good, and true it had been between us. This was not that, any more than my partnering with Starling had been. It wasn’t even sharing a bed. At the heart of my discontent, I wanted to be in love with someone the way I had been that first time. I wanted someone I could touch and be held by, someone who made everything else in the world more significant simply by her existence.

This morning, Kettricken had touched me as a friend, and that had held more meaning and even more true passion than this had. I suddenly wanted to be gone from here, for none of this ever to have happened. Jinna and I had been on the path to becoming friends. I was just beginning to know her. What had I done to that? And Hap was stirred up in this stew as well. If Jinna wanted to carry on with this, how would I manage it? Openly flouting yet again all the rules I had taught him for how a man should conduct his life? Or in secret, hiding it from Hap, furtively coming and going from Jinna’s bed?

I was deathly tired of secrets. They seemed to spawn all around me, to fasten to me and suck the life from me like cold leeches. I hungered for something real and true and open. Could I change my relationship with Jinna to that? I doubted it. Not only was there no foundation of deep and honest love between us, but once again I was enmeshed in the secret business of the Farseer intrigues. There would be secrets I must keep from her, secrets that would eventually endanger her.

I had not realized she was awake. Or perhaps my deep sigh stirred her past the edge of drowsing. She set her hand to my chest and patted me lightly. “Don’t be troubled, Tom. It wasn’t all your failure. I had guessed there might be a problem when the charm by the bed near unmanned you. And now your spirits grow bleak and grim, do they not?”

I shrugged one shoulder. She sat up beside me in the bed. She reached across me, her flesh warm against mine, and lifted my shirt off the bedside charm. The sad little thing hunched there, forlorn and alone.

“It’s a woman’s charm. It’s difficult to make, as it must be very finely tuned to the individual woman. To construct this sort of charm, you have to know the woman from the skin in. So a hedge-witch can make one for herself, but not for anyone else . . . at least, not one that is certain. This one is mine, tuned to me. It’s a charm against conception. I should have guessed that it might affect you. Any man who wants children so desperately that he takes in a foundling to raise on his own has that longing down to his bones. You may deny it, but that little hope burns in you each time you lie with a woman. I suspect it is what must drive your passion, Tom. And this little charm took that idle dream away from you before you could even wish it. It told you our joining would be futile and barren. That’s what you feel now, isn’t it?”

Having something explained to you does not always solve it. I looked aside from her. “Isn’t it?” I asked, and then winced at the bitterness in my voice.

“Poor boy,” she said sympathetically. She kissed me on the forehead, where Kettricken had kissed me earlier. “Of course not. It’s what we make it.”