He was glad when Ajax offered to clean his boots. In truth, they were rank even though he'd done his best to clean them up soon after the incident, wiping them on some pine boughs and immersing them in the snow that still clung to the lee side of every tree in huge drifts. He listened to what Ajax had to say attentively. It was clear that the lad meant it, or Hakon thought it was clear. Ajax was a good liar, which made this difficult, but he couldn't think of a motivation Ajax would have for lying in this way. If he wanted something from Hakon, there were easier ways to get it. So he was presumably speaking the truth.
Hakon hadn't really considered that Andros or Ajax would feel one way or the other if he were to die. Andros, he was fairly sure, would be fine. He made friends everywhere he went, and had a portion of his big family with him in Oxentide. Ajax, too, could befriend everyone in a tavern in the span of an evening. What would it matter to either of them that he was gone, when their lives were so full of people? Apparently, though, it would.
"It's kind of you to say that," he said, unsure of why his throat felt so tight when he did so.
Hakon said nothing when Ajax made his request.
"You don't want to hear about this," Hakon said. "People don't like this story."
In truth, he rarely told it. Almost everyone he knew lived in the Tower, and almost everyone in the Tower who cared to know anything about him heard it from someone else. He had heard some bizarre retellings of it that way, some so odd they seemed like they had happened to someone else entirely.
Ajax, though, didn't agree with him on that front. He didn't say anything at all, in point of fact. He just paused in the cleaning and looked up at Hakon, his eyes big and earnest.
It made Hakon feel something, though he couldn't quite put his finger on what.
"Alright, fine, since you're cleaning my boots, I suppose," Hakon said, shifting in his seat, and feeling a bit queasy at the prospect of talking about a moment of great weakness with Ajax.
"When I was very young, it was me and my Dad," Hakon began. "My mom died shortly after having me. I think I had been a difficult birth, but my dad didn't like talking about it, so I don't know. I wasn't always big, by the way; I was a scrawny, short kid, so I don't think I came out a particularly large baby or anything. That wasn't why."
For some reason, that was important to him and always had been. She had died giving birth to him, but he hadn't done it. That mattered. He hadn't meant to hurt her. His life had meant her death nonetheless.
"We were farmers, or I guess my dad was a farmer and I was a mouth that he had to feed, but I tried hard to be a farmer, too. We had a very small plot of land in Northradica, near Osthwick. We lived in a little village there, all farmers and then a carpenter and a smith and a priest. There wasn't a tavern; it wasn't big enough. That sort of place."
"Then, one day, the richest man anyone had ever seen came to the village. He had a fine horse and wore velvets and had rings on his fingers. We thought he was a Prince. He wasn't. It turned out he was a Valran for a member of the Entente who lived North of Amoren. I don't know what he was doing in a pissant village like ours. He came to our farm, though, and he talked with my father. He gave me some candied peaches -- I'd never had anything like it; it was the sweetest thing I'd ever tasted -- and he and my dad talked for a while. When he left, my dad said we might be moving."
"We did move, back to the estate of the Valran's liege. I didn't understand what was going on at the time -- I was maybe five or six years old, and was mostly excited about living in a big house with a courtyard and a fountain. I, ah, pieced it together. Later. As an adult."
"The man -- the Lord -- he loved my father. I know that. Or he was obsessed with him, perhaps. The Valran had known that this was the type of man his liege wanted, and he found him, and he brought him back for his Lordship's pleasure. I don't know what went on. I was cared for separately, by a nanny his Lordship hired, and I saw my father rarely. One day, my Father came to me, looking disheleved, and announced we were leaving. He didn't even give me a chance to pack. He scooped me up -- I am built much like him, by the way, and look not unlike him, so believe me when I saw he did so -- and then ran to the stables, where he grabbed a horse and then we rode through the night."
"I don't remember much of what happened next, but we settled near Jorikford, in a small village basically exactly like the one I'd been born in, and went back to doing the same things we had done before, except further South."
"And..." Hakon paused. He did not like this part of the story. "I resented it. I hated our new home. I cried, all the time. I refused to help him with chores. I begged him to take us back to his Lordship's house. My father was decently patient with me, though. He disciplined me, but he didn't thrash me, even though I deserved it. He let me be upset. He told me, over and over, that we were not going back until I accepted it, though it took the better part of two seasons."
"So we lived like that, for a growing season, then another. I settled in to village life, and started helping him with farming again. I stopped being a brat. I'd ask him, sometimes, about the big, beautiful house with the courtyard and the fountain, but he wouldn't tell me too much. Only that he could not provide for his Lordship what his Lordship truly wished for, and that we'd had to leave after that, because he had been there to serve the man. As an adult, I think I have more of an idea of what that might mean. As a child, it was more confusing, but he said it enough times until I accepted it."
"One night, there was a knock at the door. We did not have friends -- the new villagers were clannish and my father was a stranger, and we kept to ourselves, besides. My father bade me to hide in the wardrobe, and once I'd done so, he answered the door."
"It was the Valran. He was a Brand mage. He killed my father while I watched through the keyhole. He was not quick about it, and I did my best to stay quiet, but when he was done, he strode right over to the wardrobe, as though he'd known I was there all along. He opened it, and I thought he'd kill me, too. Instead, he initiated me. Made me like him."
Disgust crept into Hakon's voice. "I still am unsure why. If the Lord had demanded it, or if he had done so because he wanted me to suffer, or if he did it as some sort of mercy to me, I am unsure. He did not remain in the house to see if I survived the intiiation. Once he'd done his part, he departed. When I came to, I had my Mark," Hakon said, showing off the diamonds on his wrist.
"I stayed the night because it was dark, and I was scared, and the next morning. One of the villagers came to look for my father when they didn't see him in the fields, and found him dead, and me with a mark on my arm."
"They called the Watch, and the next day, they had came to me and asked me if I wanted to live in a Tower. I said yes. So that's how I came to Vesterhal, and how I came to be marked, and also what happened to my father. Quite a lot of my early history, all in my one story," he said, trying for a bit of levity, but not sticking the landing.
He hated this story. His cowardice, his recalcitrance, his idiocy, his weakness... all of it was on display. He had done his best to overcome these things and in time, he believed he had, but it still showed his true character, and it was not one he was proud of.
