Hiraeth is nearly seventeen when Vah Dano takes him aside at midday, quietly asking him to stay an hour late that night without sending word home first. He knows his mother will be angry if he is late for dinner, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he agrees.
Which is also a substantial part of why he agrees to analyze a new account in strict secrecy. He can see at once something about these ledgers is different than the normal work, and he asks if he should take them home to study in secret.
"That is one thing you must not do," says Dano. "Nor can I allow you to work late or early, lest there be rumors."
"Ah," says Hiraeth, seeing already that he will need to lie well to keep his sisters from speculating about his tardiness. "I will lock them in my desk and wrap them in empty folios for tomorrow. What am I looking for? Clipping? Fraudulent expenses? Merchants with connections to the steward?"
"I don't know. A clerk from Councilor Batoh's offices brought these to us in strict confidence. They want an analysis of the probability of shady dealing by Woolsday next, but they've had the damn things censored," says Dano. "They wouldn't spend the money on that much shadow magic unless they had reason to believe more evidence will be destroyed if it's known they have this much. If anyone can find a thief in a week from six sanitized account books that aren't even sequential, it's you."
Hiraeth bows. "Then I must begin at once. I will create a new cipher tonight for my notes, after I have some idea of what we're working with."
Dano snorts. "You and your damn puzzles. Go then, and before you leave we'll rekey your desk."
Hiraeth bows, and says nothing. He is certain if he opens his mouth he will disgrace himself with excitement. Apprentices simply do not work important accounts, or clients with over two million rupee a year.
Dano trusts him.
Under his gruff, suspicious, and generally humorless manner, Dano evidently has immense faith in his analysis and skill - and discretion. He hasn't even finished working off the expense of his desk, and Dano trusts him when almost no one else in Castletown does.
Hiraeth skims through the ledgers, distracted by the temptation to see if Julien is free to celebrate at Nido's tonight. Not that he can explain his reasons at all, but Julien almost never turns down an excuse to evade his insufferable cousin. If his sisters notice any difference in his manner, he will never hear the end of it - but despite his open manners, Julien is remarkably discreet.
Hiraeth feels a vague sense of pattern developing in the numbers, in the slant of the handwriting, in the spaces that say nothing. He scribbles a few ambiguous notes to himself in his oldest cipher, and tries to put it all from his mind as he walks home in the brisk spring twilight.
Julien and Max are not back from court.
Hiraeth weaves a perfect excuse he never uses, because no one is home when he arrives except his father, who is passed out drunk under the apple tree in the tiny back garden of their townhouse.
Almost every house on this street has apple and dogwood trees along the back fence, and on the other side of the alley it's all cherries and almonds. Much of Castletown has to make do with tiny shared plots crammed inside a block of timber or wattle houses, but in this neighborhood everyone not only has a little private garden, but a tiny strip of terraced plantings facing the street as well. A few years ago, Hiraeth would never have believed so little would seem a luxury.
He looks for a note from his mother or any of his sisters, but finds none. Nor is any dinner bubbling in the kitchen hearth. He checks the bedrooms to see if they have packed for home, but everything is as it should be. He decides to wake his father after all, brewing strong black tea and carrying the whole iron pot outside with the empty cups in his pockets so maybe he won't drop them.
The scent of the tea isn't enough to wake him, but he rouses when Hiraeth takes the golden glass bottle from the crook of his arm. His unfocused blue eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and he slurs a blasphemous curse as he rights himself on the bench.
Hiraeth offers a clean handkerchief, a little surprised when Link wipes at his eyes first. There can be no doubt he is hurting, but he doesn't offer an explanation for his quiet tears, and Hiraeth doesn't ask. He sits beside his father on the stone bench, watching the last rays of sunlight soften the crooked labyrinth of budding apple branches. Link pours tea for both of them, as both cups miraculously survived the journey to the bottom of the garden. He leaves room in his own cup and gestures for Hiraeth to hand him the bottle again.
Hiraeth isn't sorry when he accidentally knocks it over to spill harmlessly among the nasturtium.
"Din's fire Jojo, you could just say no," sighs Link, lifting the steaming tea to his pale lips.
"Theoretically," concedes Hiraeth. "Where's mom?"
Link snorts. "The girls have gone to dancing lessons."
"Even Leela?" Hiraeth cradles his tea in his hands, completely uninterested in drinking it. But the heat feels nice.
"Apparently it is fashionable among the wealthy to train girlish skills from infancy," says Link with a bitter twist to his lips. "I wanted - a good life for you. All of you. But I wasn't raised with all these - trappings. Manners and art and fashion. Everywhere we turn in this godsforgotten city, another ridiculous rule."
"Hn," says Hiraeth, wondering for the millionth time what his father's home village was like, and why he turned his back on everything seventeen years ago. "When you don't have to spend your whole day scratching a living from the cold earth, you have to fill the emptiness up with something. Might as well be color and music and poetry and dancing. Things that make life worth living."
Link stares at his empty teacup, a stray tear tumbling down his cheek.
"When's the last time you ate?"
Link shrugs, sniffing in the way men do when they're pretending they aren't crying. "Whatever the girls packed me for lunch. I wasn't paying attention."
Which usually means he didn't actually eat it, but gave it away to the craftspeople who work for him. "Julien showed me a place by the river gate that sells the best roast pumpkin soup, and fried sausages with cheese inside. Mom would hate it."
"Decent beer?"
"Better. Dry cider and dark stout," says Hiraeth, handing his father his own untouched cup of tea.
Link snorts in bitter amusement, and drains the cup. "You're too young to be any judge. Nothing for it but to see for myself."
Hiraeth tries not to gloat over the success of his ploy. He persuades Link into a cloak before they set out, mostly by way of standing in front of the door with it until he gives up.
Dinner is greasy and savory and the common room is loud. Link eats more heartily after a second stout, and Hiraeth takes care of the bill after the fourth in hopes of preventing him from ordering more. Hiraeth does not like the sour smell of the stout, and even less does he like the way his father is filling the silence with the kind of small talk he never indulges, and trailing off mid sentence and staring at him like he thinks the rest of what he's trying to say is written on his son's chest.
Unfortunately, one of the serving boys has recognized Master Vohenia, architect of the Great Bridge and the Royal Causeway and the Glass Garden and the Royal Opera. Word spreads quickly, toasts are raised. The owner brings a bottle of strong amber spirits to the table and refuses to hear Hiraeth's objections.
"Everyone loves a hero at arm's length," says Link with a wry twist of his lips after they are more-or-less alone again, pouring himself a generous glass of the new poison. "They think what I do and have done is amazing only because they haven't done it."
"That is generally how it works," begins Hiraeth, wondering if he has enough rupee with him to hire a cart if Link passes out again.
"They're wrong," cuts in Link, thumping the bottle down. "Being a hero isn't about bold actions any more than being a great builder is about having a wild imagination. It's solid reason and unwavering integrity and taking the right risks for the good of others. I am neither."
"Baba, what you are is drunk."
Link laughs bitterly, raising his glass in a toast to the room. "Not drunk enough. Should have listened to him when we were young, but I didn't, so here we are. I could drink any man here under the table and still walk a straight line after. I'm not proud of that."
Hiraeth sighs. "Nonetheless, you should be proud of your work. You've made life better for people all over Hyrule with what you do. So what if it's not the kind of thing people write poetry about."
"Poetry." Link makes a rude noise. "The deeds people write paeans about aren't a source of happiness to anyone, and the kind of fleeting satisfaction that flows from piling rocks one atop the other is nothing. Don't be like me, Jojo. Don't ever try to be like me."
Hiraeth watches his father drink the bitter spirits as casually as other people drink tea, distracted from his own little victory by the cipher in front of him. "Did something happen today?"
Link shakes his head. "Every season, every day has some tragedy under the blossoms and the sunshine. People will say 'oh, it is worth it to do this or that bad thing because of this good thing that will come about after it' or they will say 'this sacrifice is a good one, because things would have been even worse without' but if you never learn anything else from me, at least learn this. They're wrong. They're all wrong."
"Baba, you are being too strict with people," sighs Hiraeth. He decides his father must be exceptionally drunk to talk this much. "Even you say these same things, that the world is a hard place, and we all have to do things that are ugly and unfair and hard sometimes. It is good to make others happy, even when it's not always easy to do it. That hard things are necessary for the good of others. That doing good is worth even more when it's the hardest choice."
"Hn," said Link, draining the rest of his glass. "The idea - the seductive promise - that the end justifies any means of obtaining it is a beautiful lie. But it is still a lie. Never let yourself forget that."
Hiraeth frowns as his father pours his glass full again. "By what law do we measure the acceptable means? What map illuminates this narrow path you propose? How are we to make the whole world follow it? If one person is willing to do something unthinkable to achieve their goal, how could anyone stop them without also leaving this path?"
"First, don't assume stopping them is a good and correct end," says Link with a bitter quirk to his lips.
Hiraeth frowns. "You just said they did something unthinkable."
"Did you ask why?" Link pours more poison down his throat, licking his lips of the burn.
"You just said they did the unthinkable to achieve their goal and that we should always regard this as evil," splutters Hiraeth.
"Evil calls to evil," says Link, nodding, toying with his glass, his cold blue eyes suddenly as deep and terrible as forever. "Answer an evil done for any end with an evil in the name of Light, and you will bring forth only more darkness and chaos and blood and suffering. The two greatest evils in this world stem from this one lie: from those who act on it, and from those who look on that action and do nothing."
"Baba," says Hiraeth softly when the glass is empty again. "We should go home."
To his surprise, Link agrees. He replaces the cork in the bottle, and tries to return what's left to the owner, who refuses until Hiraeth points out that it will only be wasted if either of them attempt to carry it. Unfortunately, Link's cooperative mood ends at the street. He turns the wrong way at every possibility and refuses to be persuaded to change his course. He leads them into the slums and out the other side to a working class neighborhood that's still trying to appear respectable even as the landlords allow the buildings to sag and crumble about the edges, slumping inevitably towards ruin.
"Baba, it's getting late to be walking this close to the outer walls. We should go home. Before mom worries."
Link ignores him, weaving across a cramped and uneven plaza towards a half-bricked timber house at the corner where the street jogs. Warm lamplight fills the mullion windows and softens the cracked upper-storey stucco and peeling blue paint on the shutters. An orange cat on the stone-capped porch wall yawns at them.
Hiraeth catches his shoulder and pulls him back before he can stumble up the steps. "We shouldn't bother strangers at this hour. Or any hour."
Link grunts at him, fumbling through his pockets. "I seem to - have left my key. Where is my key? You have it Jojo?"
"I have my keys. It's fine. Let's go - not that way. Home, baba."
Link frowns up at him, then at the cramped little house. The orange cat chirps at them, its tail dancing merrily.
"Home," rumbles Hiraeth, stern as he can manage. He tries and fails to make his father turn away.
"Do you ever think about it? How life would be, if things were different? If you'd made a different choice? If you'd just - said something? Anything? Acted sooner? Waited even one more hour?" Link stares at the little house as he speaks, a strange wobble in his words.
Hiraeth frowns, wondering if his father even knows where he is. "Daydreaming about what might have been serves no purpose. All that matters is forward."
Link chokes on a sob and pulls away. He loses his balance and collapses onto the cobbles, weeping openly.
Hiraeth swears, scanning the windows facing the tiny plaza to see if anyone is awake. To his dismay, shadows in several windows suggest they've had an audience for some time. He hopes no one has summoned the town guard. The gut-churning impact of watching his father shatter is bad enough. "I know you're tired. It's late. You've had a lot to drink. Take my hand - let's get you home."
Link ignores him, curling in on his misery there on the cold stone.
"You'll feel better when you've rested," says Hiraeth, taking a knee at his side and trying to urge him upright. He wonders if he could lift his father if he dared to try. He wishes he wasn't so clumsy.
"You folks need some help?"
"No," says Hiraeth to the shadows, squinting to find the source of the voice.
Link ignores them both, weeping and babbling nonsense to himself in the language of the desert bandits.
A youth in workman's clothing and a man in rough, stained clothes emerge from a side street, moving directly toward them.
"Oh man, he doesn't look so good," says the younger one.
"Yeah," agrees the man. "You need some water for him? Need us to send for the apothecary? The doctor?"
"No. We're fine," growls Hiraeth, pushing to his feet and trying to look dangerous. It doesn't work.
"You might be. He doesn't look fine at all," says the man with a shake of his head, closing the distance to crouch beside Link. He peers at him, worrying at his own moustache, but doesn't try to touch Link. "He needs water and a warm fire. Let's bring him into the house."
"That isn't necessary," begins Hiraeth, as the man gestures for the youth to join him.
"Tala-! Put the kettle on," shouts the man. "And get the door open for us Ben. There's a good lad - here, take my hand mister. Good, you get his other. On three."
Against his better judgment, Hiraeth helps the stranger lift Link to his feet and guide him into the little house on the corner. The orange cat jumps down from the porch to try and tangle them up, but somehow they manage. A rose-cheeked woman and a child about Saso's height meet them at the door, and the woman fusses and hovers until Hiraeth surrenders his father to her.
Link is still weeping and talking nonsense to himself, as if he's not aware he's being dragged through a stranger's house.
The child tugs at his cloak. "Is he sick mister? Did he fall? Is he your friend? What happened to his face?"
Hiraeth looks down at the tiny Hylian, baffled by their bold manner. "My father drank a little too much, that's all. There's really no need-"
"Father? But you're so tall! Wow! Did you get tall by eating carrots? Is that why your hair is orange? Or mighty carp? Please don't say carp, I hate fish," says the child.
"Mika, you're being rude. Here, you take care of getting Ginger some dinner so she doesn't bother our guests," says Ben, handing the orange cat to his sib.
"Ohhh-kay," groans Mika, hefting the orange cat on their shoulder and stomping upstairs. Much as Saso might.
"Sorry about that. She's excitable. Sorry we meet in this way, but always a pleasure to make new friends. I'm Ben Fuller, and my folks are Alex and Tala. My little brother Ferret is probably in bed already."
"Hiraeth Vohenia. Clerk's apprentice," says Hiraeth after a moment, tugging off his gloves to offer his hand.
Ben smiles. "Good work is it, clerking? Weaver's apprentice myself, in the Royal Woolworks. Still on two heddles, but they might move me to four next year if I get all the samples knocked out by solstice. Da's a master dyer, if you couldn't tell."
"Good enough - we appreciate your hospitality Fuller, but we don't wish to impose. As soon as he's calmed a little, we-" begins Hiraeth.
"Young man - what's his name? He's not responding to us," interrupts Tala. "Does he speak Hylian?"
"Of course he does. He just rambles when he's in his cups," sighs Hiraeth, stuffing his gloves in his pocket. "I need to get him home. I think he must have heard from someone in his old unit is all. It happens. Stirs things up. It's fine."
"Ah, thought so. Into the kitchen with you mister," says Alex, helping his wife drag Link through the spring-hinged louvred doors. "My older brother was the same way after a decade on the western border, Light rest him. Make yourself comfortable, we've got him from here."
Hiraeth gestures helplessly, completely at a loss with these aggressively warm strangers and their tiny house with its tiny furniture and impossibly tiny staircase. A braided rag rug fills the front half of the room, cluttered with shabby padded chairs and garish blankets, tapestry pillows and stuffed animals, painted blocks and wheeled wooden toys.
"Hey, it's alright. Da's got this," says Ben, gentle and smiling.
Worrisome noises float in from the kitchen. "He usually has an iron stomach - famous for it back home. There must have been something noxious in the food. I should have known better than to take him there. I need to-"
"No, you don't," interrupts Ben, stepping between Hiraeth and the kitchen door. "I've seen more than a few schoolmates just about wreck themselves on drink. I was lucky - my folks made sure I know the signs. He was a few breaths from serious trouble, and needs to get the poison out of his stomach without feeling shamed in front of his son."
Hiraeth feels the heat rise in his face, and has to force himself to hold the dark-haired youth's fearless gaze. "Again, I - thank you for your hospitality. I mean no offense. It is - unusual to find such kindness in this city. Especially from people who lost family to - raiders."
"When we all share what we have and know, we all have more. Besides, it's the right thing to do." Ben smiles, gesturing to the little settles around the cheery, precarious little iron stove. "Please, have a seat Mister Vohenia. They'll be just a bit."
"Not unless you have a great desire to replace your chairs," says Hiraeth, shaking his head with a wry grin. It is strange standing in a home so small. His whole life he's been accustomed to heavy furniture and deep stairs, tables made for Hylians to stand at or perch beside on high stools, and benches for himself and his sisters. He wonders for the first time how many of the public buildings in the village his father worked on.
Ben laughs, looking a bit mollified. "Fair - you are amazingly tall, sir. Can I get you some tea?"
"Thank you," says Hiraeth, though he is embarrassed to accept further generosity from people who cannot possibly earn even a quarter of his father's income all together. It would be rude to refuse - so while Ben putters about, Hirath digs through his wallet for red rupees.
Ben snorts and refuses to accept it, waving him off with an admonishment to pay it forward someday when he sees a stranger in trouble. Mika returns from appeasing the orange cat, full of more questions. She and Ben valiantly keep him distracted from the wretched sound of his father being sick. They ask about himself, his work, his sisters, plying him with more tea until he is certain he will burst.
At last, Tala comes in from the kitchen to say Link is stable, but it will be a few hours before all danger is past. She invites him to stay the night as well, opening a cupboard under the stair to prove there's blankets aplenty.
Hiraeth laughs because he cannot imagine what to say. Especially when Ben offers to cross town with a message so the family won't worry.
Tala refuses his money also, even though he waited for Ben to leave the room first for paper and pen. "You don't owe us a thing, young man. We would do the same for anyone. If you must balance it in your own ledger, promise you'll bring a little light of your own into the world hereafter, and I shall be well satisfied. Do you like cake? There is only a little wedge left, and I should like to wash the plate."
Hiraeth bows, and wonders if he is dreaming. "It is even more pleasurable to be of service when cake is involved."
