‘Fennel! Shame on you, stop that. Come here.’ Jinna leaned across the table to scoop the cat from my lap. She picked up the conversation as she did so. ‘Yes, Hap’s told me of his ambitions, and it’s a fine thing to see a young man with dreams and hopes.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ I agreed with her fervently. ‘And he deserves a good chance at making something of himself. I’d do anything for him.’
Fennel now stood on Jinna’s lap and stared at me across the table. She likes me better than you. He stole a piece of fish from the edge of her plate.
Do all cats speak so rudely to strangers? I rebuked him.
He leaned back to bump his head possessively against Jinna’s chest. His yellow-eyed stare was daunting. All cats talk however they want. To whomever they want. But only a rude human speaks out of turn. Be quiet. I told you. She likes me better than you. He twisted his head to look up at Jinna’s face. More fish?
‘That’s plain,’ she agreed. I tried to remember what I had said to her as I watched her give the cat a bit of fish at the edge of the table. I knew Jinna was not Witted. I wondered if the cat was lying to me about all cats talking. I knew little of cats. Burrich had never kept them in the stables. We’d had rat-dogs to keep the vermin down.
Jinna misinterpreted my preoccupation. A touch of sympathy came into her eyes as she added, ‘Still, it must be hard to leave your own home and being your own master to come to town and serve, no matter how fine a man Lord Golden may be. I hope he’s as open-handed at paying you as he is when he comes down to Buckkeep Town to trade.’
I forced a smile to my face. ‘You know of Lord Golden, then?’
She bobbed a nod at me. ‘By coincidence, he was right here in this very room just last month. He wanted a charm to keep moths from his wardrobe. I told him I had never made such a thing before, but that I could attempt one. So gracious he was for such a noble man. He paid me for it, just on my word that I would make one. And then he insisted on looking at every charm I had in my shop, and bought no less than six of them. Six! One for sweet dreams, one for light spirits, another to attract birds – Oh, and he seemed quite entranced with that one, almost as if he were a bird himself. But when I asked to see his hands, to tune the charms to him, he told me they were all intended as gifts. I told him he might send each recipient to me, to have the charms tuned if they wished, but as yet none of them have come. Still, they will work well enough as I built them. I do like to tune the charms, though. It’s all the difference between a charm built by rote, and one created by a master. And I do regard myself as a master, thank you very much!’
These last words she offered with a hint of laughter in her voice in response to my raised brows. We laughed together, and I had no right to feel as comfortable with her as I did at that moment. ‘You’ve put my mind at rest,’ I declared. ‘I know Hap is a good lad, and little in need of my care any more. Yet I’m afraid I’m always imagining the worst befalling him.’
Don’t ignore me! Fennel threatened. He hopped up onto the table. Jinna put him on the floor. He floated back onto her lap. She petted him absently.
‘That’s just a part of being a father,’ she assured me. ‘Or a friend.’ A strange look came over her face. ‘I’m not above foolish worries myself. Even when they’re none of my business.’ She gave me a frankly speculative look that evaporated all the ease in my body. ‘I’m going to speak plainly,’ she warned me.
‘Please,’ I invited her but every bone in my body wished she would not.
‘You’re Witted,’ she said. It was not an accusation. It was more as if she commented on a disfiguring disease. ‘I travel quite a bit, in my trade, more perhaps than you have in the last few years. The mood of the folk has changed towards Witted ones, Tom. It’s become ugly everywhere I’ve been recently. I didn’t see it myself, but I heard that in a town in Farrow they displayed the dismembered bodies of the Witted ones they’ve killed, with each piece in a separate cage to prevent them coming back to life.’
I kept my face still but I felt as if ice were creeping up my spine. Prince Dutiful. Stolen or run away, but in either case vulnerable. Outside the protective walls of Buckkeep where people were capable of such monstrosities, the young prince was at risk.
‘I’m a hedge-witch,’ Jinna said softly. ‘I know what it is to be born with magic already inside you. It’s not something you can change, even if you want to. More, I know what it’s like to have a sister who was born empty of it. She seemed so free to me sometimes. She could look at a charm my father had made, and to her it was just sticks and beads. It never whispered and nagged at her. The hours I spent beside my father, learning his skills were hours she spent with my mother in the kitchen. When we were growing up, the envy went both ways. But we were a family and we could be taught tolerance of our differences.’ She smiled at her memories, then shook her head, and her face grew graver. ‘Out in the wide world, it’s different. Folk may not threaten to tear me apart or burn me, but I’ve seen hatred and jealousy in more than one set of eyes. Folk think either that it isn’t fair that I’ve got something they can never have, or they fear that somehow I’ll use what I’ve got to hurt them. They never stop to think they’ve got talents of their own that I’ll never master. They might be rude to me, jostle me on the street or try to squeeze me out of my market space, but they won’t kill me. You don’t have that comfort. The smallest slip could be your death. And if someone provokes your temper … Well. You become a different man altogether. I confess it’s been bothering me since the last time I saw you. So, well … to put my own mind at rest, I made you something.’
I swallowed. ‘Oh. Thank you.’ I could not even find the courage to ask what she had made me. Sweat was leaking down my spine despite the coolness of the dim room. She had not intended to threaten me, but her words reminded me how vulnerable I was to her. My assassin’s training went deep, I discovered. Kill her, suggested that part of me. She knows your secret and that makes her a threat. Kill her.
I folded my hands on the table before me.
‘You must think me strange,’ she murmured as she rose and went to a cupboard. ‘To be interfering in your life so when we have only met once or twice.’ I could tell she was embarrassed, yet determined to give me the gift she had made.
‘I think you are kind,’ I said awkwardly.
Her rising had displaced Fennel. He sat on the floor, wrapped his tail around his feet and glared up at me. There goes the lap! All your fault.
She had taken a box from the cupboard. She brought it back to the table and opened it. Inside was an arrangement of beads and rods on leather thongs. She lifted it and gave it a shake and it became a necklace. I stared at it, but felt nothing. ‘What does it do?’ I asked.
She laughed lightly. ‘Very little, I am afraid. I cannot make you seem unWitted, nor can I make you invulnerable to attack. I cannot even give you something that will help you master your temper. I tried to make something that would warn you of ill feelings towards you, but it became so bulky and large, it was more like war harness than a charm. You will forgive my saying that my first impression of you was that you were a rather forbidding fellow. It took me a while to warm to you, and if Hap had not spoken so well of you, I would not have given you a moment of my time. I would have thought you a dangerous man. So did many appraise you as they passed us in the market that day. And so, bluntly, did you later show yourself to be. A dangerous man, but not a wicked one, if you will excuse my judging you. Yet the set of your face, by habit, shows folk that darker aspect of yourself. And now, with a blade at your hip and your hair in a warrior’s tail, well, it does not give you a friendly demeanour. And it is easiest to hate a man that you