“I’m in no position to be a father to anyone. I didn’t even come to see Hap last night, when he told me it was important. I’ve no wish to start another life that I cannot protect.”

She shook her head over me. “What the heart longs for, and what the mind knows are two different things. You forget I’ve seen your palms, sweet man. Perhaps I know more of your heart than you do yourself.”

“You said my true love would come back to me.” Again, despite myself, my words sounded accusing.

“No, Tom. That I did not. Well do I know that what I say to a person is seldom what that person hears, but I’ll tell you again what I saw. It’s here.” She took my hand. She held the open palm close to her nearsighted eyes. Her bare breasts brushed my wrist as her fingers traced a line in my palm. “There is a love that twines in and out of your days. Sometimes, it leaves, but when it does, it runs alongside you until it returns.” She lifted my hand closer to her face, studying it. Then she kissed my palm, and moved it back to her breast. “That doesn’t mean that you must be alone and idle while you wait for it to come back,” she suggested in a whisper.

Fennel saved us both the embarrassment of my declining. Want a rat? I glanced up. The orange cat crouched on the edge of the loft, his catch squirming in his jaws as he stared down at us. It’s still got a lot of play in it.

No. Just kill it. I felt the red spark of the rat’s agony. It had no hope of living, but the life in it would not surrender easily. Life never gives up willingly.

Fennel ignored my refusal. He launched from the edge of the loft, dropping down to land beside us on the bed, where he released his prey. The frantic rodent scuttled toward us, dragging a hind leg. Jinna exclaimed in disgust and leapt from the bed. I snatched up the rat. A pinch and a twist ended its torment.

You’re fast! Fennel approved.

Here. Take it away. I offered him the dead rat.

He sniffed the dead body. You broke it! Fennel crouched on the bed, staring at me in round-eyed disapproval.

Take it away.

I don’t want it. It’s no fun anymore. He growled low at me, then leapt from the bed. You ended it too fast. You just don’t know how to play. He went immediately to the door and clawed the jamb, demanding to go out. Jinna, clutching her robe against her nakedness, opened the door and he sidled out. I was left sitting naked in her bed, a dead rat in my hands. Blood leaked from the battered rat’s nose and mouth over my hands.

My trousers and drawers were still tangled together when Jinna tossed them to me. “Don’t get blood on my bedding,” she cautioned me, so I didn’t set the rat down, but struggled into my trousers one-handed.

I threw the rat out onto a midden behind the house. When I came back in, she was pouring hot water over tea in the pot. She gave me a smile. “The other tea seems to have gotten cold, somehow.”

“Did it?” I tried to speak as lightly as she did. I went back to her bedroom for my shirt. After I put it on, I twitched the bedding straight. I avoided looking at the charm. When I came out, I ignored my own desire to leave and sat down at the table. We shared bread and butter and honey, and hot tea. Jinna chatted of the three women who had come to see her. She had read the younger daughter’s hands, to see if an offer of marriage boded well for her. Then she had advised her to wait. It was a long involved story, full of detail, and I let it stream gently past me. Fennel came to my chair, stood up and dug his front claws into my leg, then hauled himself up onto my lap. From there, he surveyed the table.

Butter for the cat.

I have no reason to be nice to you.

Yes you do. I am the cat.

He was so supremely self-confident that that was enough reason for me to butter a corner of a slice of bread and offer it to him. I had expected him to carry it off. Instead, he allowed me to hold it while he licked it clean of butter. More.

No.

“. . . or Hap may find himself in the same sort of fix.”

I tried to backtrack her words, but realized I had hopelessly lost the thread of her conversation. Fennel was perversely digging his claws into my thigh as I ignored him. “Well, I intended to speak with him today,” I said, and hoped that the comment made some sort of sense.

“You should. Of course, there’s no good your waiting for him here. Even if you had come by last night, you’d have had to sit and wait for him. He comes in late each night, and leaves late for his work every morning.”

Concern prickled me. That didn’t sound like Hap.

“So what do you suggest?”

She took a breath and sighed it out, a bit annoyed. I probably deserved it. “What I just said. Go to the shop, and speak with his master. Ask for some time with Hap. Corner him, and set down some rules for him. Say that if he doesn’t keep them, you’ll insist that he board with his master like the other apprentices do. That would give him a chance to govern himself, or be governed. For if he moves into the apprentices’ quarters there, he’ll find that one evening off twice a month is all he’ll get to himself.”