She smoothed her hair back from her face. It was light brown, with a lot of curl to it. 'I've heard of that. Some do it that way, but most don't. They buy an apprentice, usually a willing one, and if he doesn't work out, then they can sell him for a drudge. Then you're not much better than a slave for six years.' She sniffed. 'Some say it makes an apprentice try harder, to know he may end up doing scut work in a kitchen or pumping a bellows in a smithy for six years if his master isn't pleased.'
'Well. It sounds to me like you'd better learn to like puppets,' I said lamely. I sat on the tail of my master's cart and looked out over my flock. She sat down next to me.
'Or hope someone buys me from my master,' she said despondently.
'You make yourself sound like a slave,' I said reluctantly. 'It's not that bad, is it?'
'Doing something you think is stupid, day after day?' she asked me. 'And being hit for not doing it perfectly? How is that better than being a slave?'
'Well, you're fed and clothed and sheltered. And he's giving you a chance to learn something, a trade that would let you travel all over the Six Duchies if you became good at it. You might end up performing for the King's Court at Buckkeep.'
She looked at me oddly. 'You mean Tradeford.' She sighed and shifted herself closer to me. 'It's lonely for me. All the others, they all want to be puppeteers. They get angry at me when I make mistakes, and always call me lazy and won't talk to me when they say I spoiled a performance. There's not one kind one among them; none of them would have cared about my face getting scarred as you did.'
There seemed nothing to reply to that. I didn't know the others well enough to agree or disagree. So I said nothing and we sat watching the sheep. The silence lengthened as the night got darker. I thought that soon I should kindle a fire.
'So,' she began after a few more minutes of my silence. 'How did you become a shepherd?'
'My parents died. My sister inherited. She didn't particularly care for me, and here I am.'
'What a bitch!' she said fiercely.
I took a breath to defend my fictitious sister, and then realized I'd only be extending the conversation. I tried to think of something I needed to go and do, but the sheep and other beasts were right there before us, grazing peacefully. Useless to hope that the others would soon return. Not with a tavern and new faces to talk to after our days on the road.
I finally made excuse that I was hungry and got up to gather stones and then dry dung and sticks for a fire. Tassin insisted on cooking. I was not truly hungry, but she ate with a hearty appetite, and fed me well from the puppeteer's traveling supplies. She made a pot of tea as well, and afterward we sat by the fireside sipping it from heavy red porcelain mugs.
Somehow the silence had changed from awkward to companionable. It had been pleasant to sit and watch someone else prepare the meal. She had chattered at first, asking if I liked this sort of spice and did I make my tea strong, but not really listening for any answers. Seeming to find some sort of acceptance in my silence, she had gone on to speak more intimately of herself. With a sort of despair, she spoke of days spent learning and practicing a thing she had no desire to learn nor practice. She spoke with a grudging marvel of the dedication of the other puppeteers, and their enthusiasm that she could not share. Her voice dwindled off and she looked up at me with eyes full of misery. She did not need to explain to me the loneliness she felt. She turned the talk to lighter things, the minor irritations she felt, the foods they ate that she disliked, the way one of the other puppeteers always smelled of old sweat, of one woman who reminded her to speak her lines by pinching her.
Even her complaints were pleasant in an odd way; filling my mind with her trivialities so that I could not focus on my larger problems. Being with her was in some ways like being with the wolf. Tassin was focused on the now, on this meal and this night, with little thought of anything else. From considering this my thoughts wandered to Nighteyes. I quested softly toward him. I could sense him, somewhere, alive, but could tell little more than that. Perhaps too great a distance separated us; perhaps he was too focused on his new life. Whatever the reason, his mind was not as open to me as it had once been. Perhaps he was simply becoming more attuned to the ways of his pack. I tried to feel glad that he had found such a life for himself, with many companions and possibly a mate.
'What are you thinking about?' Tassin asked.
She spoke so softly that I replied without thinking, still staring into the fire. 'That sometimes it only makes one more lonely to know that somewhere else, one's friends and family are well.'
She shrugged. 'I try not to think of them. I suppose my farmer found another girl, one whose parents would wait for a bride-price. As for my mother, I suspect her prospects were better without me. She was not so old that she could not catch another man.' She stretched, an oddly catlike gesture, then turned her head to gaze into my face and added, 'There's no sense in thinking of what's far away and what you haven't got. It will only make you unhappy. Be content with what you can have now.'
Our eyes were locked suddenly. There was no mistaking her meaning. For an instant I was shocked. Then she leaned across the small space between us. She put one hand on each side of my face. Her touch was gentle. She pushed the kerchief back from my hair, then used both hands to smooth the hair back from my face. She looked into my eyes as the tip of her tongue moistened her lips. She slid her hands down the sides of my face, down my neck to my shoulders. I was as entranced as a mouse looking at a snake. She leaned forward and kissed me, opening her mouth against mine as she did so. She smelled like sweet smoky incense.
I wanted her with a suddenness that dizzied me. Not as Tassin, but as woman and gentleness and closeness. It was lust that raced through me, and yet it was not that at all. It was like the Skill-hunger that eats at a man, demanding closeness and total communion with the world. I was unutterably weary of being alone. I caught her to me so quickly I heard her gasp of surprise. I kissed her as if I could devour her and somehow be less lonely by doing so. Suddenly we were prone and she was making small pleased sounds that suddenly changed to her pushing at my chest. 'Stop a moment,' she hissed. 'Just wait. There's a rock under me. And I mustn't spoil my clothes, give me your cloak to spread out …. 'I watched her avariciously as she spread my cloak out on the earth by the fire. She lay down upon it and patted a place beside her. 'Well? Aren't you coming back?' she asked me flirtatiously. More lewdly, she added, 'Let me show you all I can do for you.' She smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt, inviting me to think of my hands doing the same.
If she had said nothing, if we had never paused, if she had simply looked up at me from the cloak … but her question and her manner were all wrong, suddenly. All the illusion of gentleness and closeness was gone, replaced by the same sort of challenge another fighter might offer me in a practice-yard with staves. I am no better than any man. I didn't want to think, to consider anything. I longed to be able to simply throw myself down upon her and quench myself in her, but instead I heard myself asking, 'And if I get you with child?'
'Oh,' and she laughed lightly as if she had never considered such a thing. 'Then you can marry me, and buy my prentice years from Master Dell. Or not,' she added, as she saw my face change. 'A baby's not so large a thing to be rid of as a man might think. A few silvers for the right herbs … but we needn't think of that now. Why worry about a thing that may never come to pass?'
Why indeed? I looked at her, wanting her with all the lust of my months alone and untouched. But I knew also that for that deeper hunger for companionship and understanding, she offered me no more solace than any man might find in his own hand. I shook my head slowly, more to myself than to her. She smiled up at me mischievously and reached a hand toward me.
'No.' I said the word quietly. She looked up at me, so incredulously amazed that I nearly laughed. 'This is not a good idea,' I said, and hearing the words aloud, I knew they were true. There was nothing lofty in it, no thoughts of undying faithfulness to Molly or shame that I had already left one woman with the burden of bearing a child alone. I knew those feelings, but they were not what came to me then. What I sensed was a hollowness in me that would only be made worse by laying myself down beside a stranger. 'It's not you,' I said as I saw her cheeks redden suddenly and the smile fade from her face. 'It's me. The fault's with me.' I tried to make my voice comforting. It was a waste.
She stood up suddenly. 'I know that, stupid,' she said scathingly. 'I only meant to be kind to you, nothing more.' She stalked angrily away from the fire, blending with the shadows quickly. I heard the slam of the wagon door.
I stooped slowly to pick my cloak up and shake the dust from it. Then, the night having become suddenly colder with a rising wind, I put it around my shoulders and sat down again to stare into my fire.
