After a moment I set aside the knife I was sharpening and went to stand beside him. "What is it?" I asked him.

The boy returns.

So soon? But as I framed the thought, I knew it was not soon at all. The months he had spent with Starling had devoured the spring. He'd shared high summer with me, but been gone all the month of early harvest and part of full harvest. Only a moon and a half had passed, and yet it still seemed horribly long. I caught a glimpse of a figure at the far end of the lane. Both Nighteyes and I hastened to meet him. When he saw us coming, he broke into a weary trot to meet us halfway. When I caught him in my arms in a hug, I knew at once that he had grown taller and lost weight. And when I let him go and held him at arm's length to look at him, I saw both shame and defeat in his eyes. "Welcome home," I told him, but he only gave a rueful shrug.

"I've come home with my tail between my legs," he confessed, and then dropped down to hug Nighteyes. "He's gone all to bone!" Hap exclaimed in dismay.

"He was sick for a while, but he's on the mend now," I told him. I tried to make my voice hearty and ignore the jolt of worry I felt. "The same could be said of you," I added. "There's meat on the platter and bread on the board. Come eat, and then you can tell us how you fared out in the wide world."

"I can tell you now as we go, in few words," he returned as we trudged back to — the cabin. His voice was deep as a man's and the bitterness was a man's, also. "Not well. The harvest was good, but wherever I went, I was last hired, for always they wanted to hire their cousin first, or their cousin's friends. Always I was the stranger, put to the dirtiest and heaviest of the labor. I worked like a man, Tom, but they paid me like a mouse, with crumbs and cut coins. And they were suspicious of me, too. They didn't want me sleeping within their barns, no, nor talking to their daughters. And between jobs, well, I iiad to eat, and all cost far more than I thought it should. I've come home with only a handful more of coins than when I left. I was a fool to leave. I would have done as well to stay home and sell chickens and salt fish."

The hard words rattled out of him. I said nothing, but let him get all of them said. By then we were at the door. He doused his head in the water barrel I had filled for the garden while I went inside to set out food on the table. He came into the cabin, and as he glanced around, I knew without his saying it that it had grown smaller in his eyes. "It's good to be home," he said. And in the next breath, he went on, "But I don't know what I'm going to do for an apprentice fee. Hire out another year, I suppose. But by then, some might think me too old to learn well. Already one man I met on the road told me that he had never met a master craftsman who hadn't begun his training before he was twelve. Is that honey?"

"It is." I put the pot on the table with the bread and the cold meat, and Hap fell to as if he had not eaten for days. I made tea for us, and then sat across the table from my boy, watching him eat. Ravenous as he was, he still fed bits of his meat to the wolf beside his chair. And Nighteyes ate, not with appetite, but both to please the boy and for the sake of sharing meat with a pack member. When the fowl was down to bones with not even enough meat left to make soup, he sat back in his chair with a sigh. Then he leaned forward abruptly, his eager fingers tracing the charging buck on the tabletop. "This is beautiful! When did you learn to carve like this?"

"I didn't. An old friend came by and spent part of his visit decorating the cabin." I smiled to myself. "When you've a moment, take a look at the rain barrel."

"An old friend? I didn't think you had any save Star-ling."

He did not mean the observation to sting, but it did. His fingers traced again the emblem. Once, FitzChivalry Farseer had worn that charging buck as an embroidered crest. "Oh, I've a few. I just don't hear from them often."

"Ah. What about new friends? Did Jinna stop in on her way to Buckkeep?"

"She did. She left us a charm to make our garden grow better, as thanks for a night's shelter."

He gave me a sideways glance. "She stayed the night, then. She's nice, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is." He waited for me to say more but I refused. He ducked his head and tried to smother a grin in his hand. I reached across the table and cuffed him affectionately. He fended off the mock blow, then suddenly caught my hand in his. His grin ran away from his face to be replaced by anxiety. "Tom, Tom, what am I going to do? I thought it would be easy and it wasn't. And I was willing to work hard for a fair wage, and I was civil and put in a fair day, and still they all treated me poorly. What am I going to do? I can't live here at the edge of nowhere for all my life. I can't!"

"No. You can't." And in that moment I perceived two things. First, that my isolated lifestyle had ill prepared the boy to make his own way, and second, that this was what Chade must have felt when I had declared that I would not be an assassin anymore. It is strange to think that when you gave a boy what you thought was the best of yourself you actually crippled him. His frantic glance left me feeling small and shamed. I should have done better by him. I would do better by him. I heard myself speak the words before I even knew I had thought them. "I do have old friends at Buckkeep. I can borrow the money for your apprenticeship fee." My heart lurched at the thought of what form the interest on such a loan might take, but I steeled myself. I would go to Chade first, and if what he asked of me in return was too dear, I would seek out the Fool. It would not be easy to humbly ask to borrow money, but

"You'd do that? For me? But I'm not even really your son." Hap looked incredulous.

I gripped his hand. "I would do that. Because you're as close to a son as I'm ever likely to get."

"I'll help you pay the debt, I swear."

"No you won't. It will be my debt, taken on freely. I'll expect you to pay close attention to your master and devote yourself to learning your trade well."

"I will, Tom, I will. And I swear, in your old age, you shall lack for nothing." He spoke the words with the devout ardency of guileless youth. I took them as he intended them, and ignored the glowing amusement in Nighteyes' gaze.

See how edifying it is when someone sees you as tottering toward death? never said you were at your grave's edge.

No. You just treat me as if I were brittle as old chicken bones.

Aren't you?

No. My strength returns. Wait for the falling of the leaves and cooler weather. I'll be able to walk you until you drop. Just as I always have.

But what if I have to journey before then?

The wolf lowered his head to his outstretched forepaws with a sigh. And what if you jump for a buck's throat and miss? There's no point to worrying about it until it happens.

"Are you thinking what I am?" Hap anxiously broke the seeming silence of the room.

I met his worried gaze. "Perhaps. What were you thinking?"

He spoke hesitantly. "That the sooner you speak to your friends at Buckkeep, the sooner we will know what to expect for the winter."

I replied slowly. "Another winter here would not suit you, would it?"

"No." His natural honesty made him reply quickly. Then he softened it with, "It isn't that I don't like it here with you and Nighteyes. It's just that…" He floundered for a moment. "Have you ever felt as if you could actually feel time flowing away from you? As if life were passing you byand you were caught in a backwater with the dead fish and old sticks?"

You can be the dead fish. I'll be the old stick. I ignored Nighteyes. "I seem to recall I've had such a feeling, a time or two." I glanced at Verity's incomplete map of the Six Duchies. I let out my breath and tried not to make it a sigh. "I'll set out as soon as possible."