Fools Quest, Page 41

  “How did you discover that?”

  “When she was very small, she reached out for me. I had a dream of a little girl tugging at my sleeve. Calling me Papa and begging me to pick her up. ” The proud smile grew stronger. “She is strong with it, Fitz. Strong enough to find me. ”

  “I thought she didn’t know you were her father. ”

  “She doesn’t. Her mother left her to be raised by her grandparents. Good enough people in their own way. I can recognize that, even if they bled me for money. Obviously they were not fond of me, but they were loyal to their own blood. She was undeniably their granddaughter, and they raised her as such. With the same haphazard raising they had bestowed upon her mother, I am sad to say. Benign but not intelligent. Keeping a child from harm is not the same as rearing one. ” He shook his head, his mouth sour. “Her mother disdained her from the beginning, and even as a small child Shine knew that. But she also knew that she had a father, somewhere, and she yearned for him. And in her dreams, she followed that yearning. And our minds touched. ”

  The uncharacteristically tender smile on his face told me that was his real secret. His daughter had reached out and touched minds with him. And he was proud of her, so proud of her Skill. He regretted not being able to have her near him and shape the innate cleverness he sensed in her. Perhaps if he had had her from her beginnings, she could have inherited his role. Too late for that now, I thought. Those thoughts flashed like lightning through my mind, but my own concerns immediately overwhelmed them.

  “Chade, I consider it very likely that you had actually touched her with Skill first. As I did with both Nettle and Dutiful, not even realizing what I was doing. And she then reached back to you. So you can reach her and she can tell us where she is and we can reclaim them! Chade, why didn’t you do that immediately?”

  The smile vanished as if it had never been. “You’ll judge me harshly for this,” he warned me. “I sealed her. To everyone but me. While she was still small. Long before I brought her to you, I sealed her against the Skill. To protect her. ”

  I felt sick with disappointment, but the orderly part of my mind tidied my facts into a neatly dovetailed stack. “Sealed to the Skill. Which was why she alone was still capable of fighting the Servants when everyone else was as passive as cattle awaiting slaughter. ”

  He bowed his head in a slow nod.

  “Can’t you reach out and unseal her? Skill the keyword to her and open her mind?”

  “I’ve tried. I can’t. ”

  “Why not?” Panic, anger at a lost opportunity. My voice cracked on the words.

  “My Skill is not strong enough, perhaps. ”

  “Let me help you then. Or Thick. I’ll wager Thick could batter down any wall. ”

  He shot a look at me. “Battering. Not the best word to tempt me to try the experiment. But I suppose we shall when Thick gets here. Yet I doubt it will work. I think she has put up her own walls and that they may be stout ones. ”

  “Did you teach her to do that?

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  “I didn’t have to. She’s like you. Some things she does by instinct. Do you not recall what Verity said of you? That he could often reach you easily, but the moment you went into any sort of a battle-frenzy, you were lost to him. ”

  That had been true and was apparently still true. “But she’s not in a battle. They were taken days ago …”

  “She’s a lovely young woman in the hands of Chalcedean brutes. ” His voice grew thick. “I’m a coward, Fitz. I refuse to imagine what her life has been since she was taken. She may very well be in an embattled state of mind at every moment of every day. ”

  Don’t think about it, I warned myself. The dread was as engulfing as the fog had been at Withywoods. I scrabbled back and away from barbed speculation as to how our daughters might be treated. But they treated Bee as a prize. Surely that will protect her! Such a grimy comfort to offer myself, that my little girl might be safe from all that threatened Chade’s daughter. Burning sickness rose in the back of my throat.

  Chade’s voice was low. “Stop feeling and think. Think and plan. ” He lifted a hand, grimacing at the pain of the motion, and rubbed his forehead. “Shine was able to resist the magic because she was sealed from the Skill. That may be an armor to use when we go against them. ”

  “But she was not the only one who resisted. Revel fought back. And Lant. ”

  Chade’s voice was deep. “Until they didn’t. Recall what Lant said. That he was trying to hold the door and then suddenly the invaders were laughing at him and walking past him. However they netted that magic over Withywoods, it was not in place when they first began their attack. Why? Did they need to be closer to their victims for it to work? That Shine, sealed against all Skill-influence, was the sole person capable of continuing resistance hints to me that if they are not using the Skill itself, their magic is closely related to it. ” He paused and pointed a bony finger at me. “So. This tells us what, Fitz?”

  I felt as if I were his student again. I tried to find the path his thoughts had already traveled. “Perhaps their Skill-users are not as strong—”

  He was already wagging the finger at me. “No. The door-breakers and swordsmen came first. If they had multiple Skill-users, surely they would be the front ranks. Nullifying resistance is better than breaking doors and killing, especially if they were actually looking for this Unexpected Son. Why take a chance that your mercenaries will slaughter the very boy you are seeking? But none of that is what matters here. Think. ”

  I thought, and then shook my head at him.

  He gave a small sigh. “Similar tools often have similar weaknesses. How did we defeat their magic at Withywoods?”

  “Elfbark tea. But I cannot see how we can deploy that resistance against them when we do not even know where they are. ”

  “Right now we do not know where they are. So, despite our desire to dash up and down every highway between here and Chalced with drawn swords, we muster our weapons and ready them as best we can. ”

  “We prepare packets of elfbark tea?” I tried not to sound sarcastic. Was his mind wandering?

  “Yes,” he said sharply, as if he had heard my thought. “Among other supplies. My explosive powders are much improved since the last time you experienced them. When Lady Rosemary returns from … her errand, I will have her package some of them for us. I would do it myself, if this wound were not troubling me so. ” He touched it again, lightly with his fingertips, wincing.

  I did not ask his permission for I was certain I would not get it. I leaned forward and set the back of my hand to his brow. “Fever,” I confirmed. “You should be resting, not plotting with me. Shall I fetch a healer?”

  He had been sitting up. Now I understood that it was because he could not lean back due to the pain. He gritted his teeth in a smile. “A prince does not run and fetch the healer. You ring the bell and send a servant. But here we are not princes or lords, but assassins. And fathers. We do not rest while beasts hold our daughters captive. So help me lean back. And bring no healers here, but go and find for me the remedies you think best. They will want me to sleep, when I well know that the fires of a fever can make my thoughts burn brighter. ”

  “I will. But then you will tell me Shine’s keyword and together we will try to reach her. ” On that I was determined. This was a secret he could not be allowed to keep.

  He folded his lips. I stood firm. It was only when he nodded that I set my arm around his shoulders and supported him as he lay back on the bed. Even so he gasped and set his hand to his wound. “Oh, the blood flows again,” he complained. Then he was quiet, his lips puffing in and out as he breathed against the pain.

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  “I think a healer should look at you. Poisons I know, and the sort of medicines that have kept me alive when no one else was near to help me. But I am no healer. ”

  I saw him almost give way.
Then he bartered, “Bring me something for the pain. Then we will try to reach Shine. And after that, you may summon a healer. ”

  “Agreed!” I said, and hastened out the door before he could tie any strings to our bargain.

  Back to my room I went, locking the door behind me and opening the secret stair. A tap, tap, tap startled me. I pushed back the curtain to find the crow clinging to the stone sill of my window. The moment I opened it, she was in. She hopped to the floor of my room, looked around, then spread her wings and flew up the stairs. Up I went, two steps at a time.

  There a curious sight met my eyes. The Fool was at table with a young girl of about fourteen. Her hair was gathered back and pinned neatly under a ruffled cap. Humble as it was, it still boasted three buttons. Her neat servant’s tunic of Buckkeep blue covered her modest bust. She was watching intently as the Fool moved a small, sharp knife against a piece of wood.

  “… more difficult without my sight, but it was always my fingers that read the wood for me when I was carving. I’m afraid that I’d grown more dependent on my fingertips than I realized. I can still feel the wood, but it’s not the same as when …”

  “Who are you, and who let you into this chamber?” I demanded. I moved immediately to put myself between the Fool and the girl. She looked up at me with a woebegone expression. Then Ash spoke from her lips.

  “I’ve been careless. Lord Chade will not be pleased with me. ”

  “What is it? What has alarmed you so?” The Fool was breathless with anxiety, his golden eyes wide. The carving tool in his hand he now gripped as a weapon.

  “It’s nothing. Just more of Chade’s mummery! I’ve walked in on Ash dressed as a serving girl. I didn’t recognize him at first, and it gave me a turn. It’s all right, Fool. You are safe. ”

  “What?” he asked in a flustered voice, and then managed a nervous laugh. “Oh. If that’s all, then …” But when he set the tool to the wood, his hand trembled. Wordlessly, he set it down. Then, swift as a snake striking, his hand shot across the table to grip Ash’s arm. The boy cried out but the Fool held fast as he seized his other wrist as well. “Why would you disguise yourself so? Who pays you?” Then, as his hand traveled farther down the boy’s arm to his wrist and then hand, he sat back suddenly in his chair. He did not release Ash’s arm but said in a shaking voice, “Not Ash in a serving girl’s dress, but a serving girl who has masqueraded as Chade’s young apprentice. What goes on here, Fitz? How could we have been so stupid as to have trusted so quickly!”

  “Your trust was not misplaced, sir. Possibly I would have shared my secret sooner if Lord Chade had not forbidden it. ” In a lower voice she added, “You are hurting me. Please loosen your grip. ”

  The flesh of the girl’s forearm stood up in white ridges between the Fool’s fingers. I spoke. “Fool. I have her. You can let her go. ”

  He did, but reluctantly, a slow opening of his hands. He sat back on his chair. His golden eyes whirled and gleamed angrily in the low light. “And what have I done to deserve this deception from Lord Chade?”

  She looked at me as she spoke, rubbing her arm. Her cheeks were very pink and now that the Fool had announced her as a girl, I wondered how I could have seen her as anything else, even in her lad’s guise. When she spoke, her voice was a notch higher. “Sirs, I beg you. There was no wish to deceive you, but only to remain as you had first seen me. As the boy, Ash. So I was when Lord Chade first met me, though he saw through my guise in less than an evening. He said it was in my throat and in the fineness of my hands. He has given me much scrubbing of floors to roughen them, which helps, but he says the bones give me away. Is that how you knew, Lord Golden? By the bones of my hands?”

  “Don’t call me by that name. Don’t speak to me at all!” the Fool declared childishly. I wondered if he would have regretted his words if he had seen how they devastated her. I cleared my throat, and she turned her stricken gaze to me.

  “Do speak to me, and give me the tale from the beginning. From the time you first met Lord Chade. ”

  She composed herself, folding her betraying hands on the table before her. I had forgotten the crow, and when Motley hopped closer, I startled. The crow bobbed and touched his beak to her hand, as if to reassure her. Ash-girl almost smiled. But when she spoke, I could hear how rattled she still was. “My tale goes back quite a bit before I met Lord Chade, sir. You know that my mother was prostituted. That is where my tale of deception begins. I was born a girl, but my mother made me a boy within minutes of my birth. She birthed me alone, biting a folded handkerchief to keep her cries from betraying her. When I was discovered, I was already swaddled, and she declared to the mistress of the establishment that she had borne a son. So I grew up in that house of women, believing myself a boy. My mother was fastidious in her insistence that only she might care for me, and enforcing on me privacy for any moment when my body might be bared. I had no playmates, left the house only in my mother’s company, and was severely schooled that when I was not with my mother, I must remain in her small and private dressing chamber and keep myself quiet. This I learned so long ago that I do not even remember how it was taught to me.

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  “I was nearly seven when she revealed the truth to me. Having never seen anyone naked but a woman, I knew nothing of how a man’s parts differed. I had believed myself a boy, all that time. I was shocked and distressed. And afraid. For in our house, there were girls not much older than me who toiled at my mother’s trade sadly, though they must always pretend to be merry and giddy. That, my mother told me, was why she had made me a boy and why I must remain a boy. My true name, she told me, is Spark. Ash is what covers a coal and hides its light, and so she made my names. ”

  Despite himself, the Fool was rapt in her tale, his mouth slightly ajar in either wonder or horror. I felt a deep sadness for her.

  “How is it that women work that trade as if they were slaves? Slavery is not permitted in the Six Duchies. ”

  She shook her head at my ignorance. “No. But when you incur a debt you cannot pay, often the judgment is that you must labor to pay it off. When my mother was young and new to Buckkeep Town, she learned to love the gaming tables. She was pretty and clever, but not clever enough to see that the owner of the gaming establishment gave her credits too easily. And when she was deeply enmeshed, he closed his trap. ” She cocked her head at me. “She is not, by far, the first woman or man to be so coerced. It is well known that there is a judge, Lord Sensible, who presides over many debtors’ judgments, and often sends comely men and women into the flesh trade. Discreet houses, such as the one where my mother worked, pay off the gambling debts and claim the new debt. If anyone complains, the owners threaten to sell the debt to the ones who put debtors on the docks and streets, to service their trade in the alleys. But once my mother was in the house, she was charged for the food she ate and her clothing and her bed and clean bedding. The whores can never emerge from their debts. When I was born and my mother kept me, I became an additional expense for her. ”

  “Lord Sensible. ” I committed the name to my memory and vowed coldly that Dutiful would hear it from my lips. How had I lived so long in Buck and never known of such a thing?

  Spark resumed her tale. “The women of the house began to use me as their little errand boy. I was allowed out and about, to run notes to their gentlemen or bring special items from the markets. Our lives went on. I met Lord Chade one evening when he asked for a lad to take a message from him to a ship at the river docks. I took it from him and did as he bade. When I returned, I gave him the written reply. I had turned to leave when he called me back, holding up a silver penny. But when I went to take it from him, he seized my hand, even as you did, and then in a whisper asked what my game was. I told him I had no game, that I was my mother’s errand boy and if he had questions, he should ask them of her. And that night he sought her out instead of his favorite, and spent the whole evening with her. He was v
ery impressed with how well she had taught me. And after that, whenever he came for his visit, he always made excuse to see me, to send me on an errand and always to pay me a silver penny. He began to teach me more things. To push my chin out to have more of a jaw, and to roughen my hand with cold water, and to pad out my shoes to make my feet look bigger.

  “My mother was very good at her trade, but it was not what she had wanted for herself, and still less for me. Lord Chade promised that when I turned fifteen he would take me as his servant and teach me a different trade. ” She paused, sighing. “Fate intervened. He took me when I was eleven. ”

  “Wait. How old are you?”

  “As a girl? Thirteen. When I am Ash, I tell people I am eleven. I’m a rather spindly boy, even though I’m strong for a girl. ”

  “What happened when you were eleven?” the Fool demanded.

  Spark’s face lost all expression. Her eyes were unreadable. But she kept her voice steady. “A gentleman thought it would amuse him to share a bed with a mother and her son. He had already paid the lady of our house a substantial sum for such a night when he came to our quarters. No one asked our permission. When my mother objected, the owner of the house said that the debt to her was mine as well as my mother’s. And that if my mother and I did not comply, she would turn me out of the house that very minute. ” Her face went paler, her nostrils pinched with distaste. “The gentleman came to our rooms. He told me that first I would watch as he did his business with my mother. And then she would watch as he taught me ‘a new little amusement. ’ I refused and he laughed. ‘You’ve raised him to have spirit. I’ve always wanted a spirited little mount. ’

  “My mother said, ‘You will not have him, now or ever. ’ I thought he would be angry but it only seemed to make him excited. My mother was wearing a pretty wrap, as the women of the house often did. He seized the neck of it, tore it open, and pushed my mother down on the bed, but instead of fighting back, she wrapped her arms and legs about him and told me to run away, to leave the house and never come back. ” She paused, her mind going back. Her upper lip twitched up twice: If she had been a cat, she would have spat out a hiss.