Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [50]
She nodded soberly. He sighed. “That’s the thing, you see. There is a lot I can do…but there is a lot more that I can’t. I’m not powerful enough to make it so that poor girl won’t have to endure that suffering. I can make a choice of paths for The Tradition, but I can’t send it out of its chosen path once it’s in. There are too many things I can’t do. I can sing a ghost into the afterlife, or a demon to sleep, but I can’t cure someone’s illness, nor do anything at all about boyars that are mean-spirited and cruel to their peasants. It’s—” he looked down at the half-peeled egg in his hands, as if surprised to see it there “—it’s frustrating.”
She felt a surge of pity for him, as well as a burst of affection. How could you not love a man like this one? His heart was so big….
And with all that he did for people, he himself was treated as the fool, the nuisance, the fellow best gotten out of the way when something important was going on. Even though his family knew what he was. They still discounted him,
“Why do you keep doing these things?” she asked finally. “You get scant thanks from it, even from your own people, who know what you are. You get kicked around by everyone else. And there is probably at least one of your brothers who thinks you are a fool anyway for making yourself miserable with trying to help everyone else and not going off and finding treasures and coming home a rich man.”
He pondered that a moment. “I do this because…I have to, Katya. I have to, or I won’t be true to myself. I’m not a legend or a hero, I don’t slay dragons, I don’t do any of the things that a real hero can. But I can make things better, one day at a time, for most of the Kingdom. We’re given a choice in our lives, to make things better, or worse, or merely endure like sheep. I choose to make things better, as much as I can.”
She nodded. “I’m lucky,” she said ruefully. “Even if only a handful of people know what I do, at least I’m not abused the way you are.”
But he laughed at that. “Oh, my family makes sure that I never have to worry about truly being abused. And it’s not so bad, really. I get to pull some pretty outrageous pranks and I get away with it, too. So there’re some advantages to it.”
As they ate, he told her about some of his funnier stunts. How he’d left a sheep in the bed of a visiting boyar who seemed to think that his rank gave him the right to use whatever servant girl he wanted. How he’d arranged for another who was drunk nearly all the time to get only water while he stayed. How he’d blundered into a group of mutually antagonistic boyars and tangled them all up together in their own cloaks so that they had to talk to one another.
She had to smile at the image that called up in her mind.
By that time, they were both full, she had packed what they hadn’t eaten back into the hamper, and the sun was making them both drowsy. Finally he stretched and yawned. “Would it be terribly ungallant of me to take a nap?” he asked. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“No, not at all,” she hastily said. “Bad dreams?”
“No, the opposite.” For some reason, he was blushing.
She smiled. “You go right ahead. I’ll keep watch.”
He stretched himself out on the blanket they had used for their picnic. “Thank you, Katya,” he murmured drowsily.
And then he was asleep.
She watched him for a while, as he slumbered so deeply that he scarcely seemed to breathe. She wondered what had happened to keep him awake. And then, the warm sun overhead felt so good…her eyelids started to droop. She woke with a start twice, but the third time she could not fight sleep off anymore.
She woke up curled against