Fools Quest, Page 45

  “You are mad! And I am past weariness. ”

  I walked away from him, to the far end of the room. This was as close to a real quarrel as we had come since the Fool had returned. He, of all people, should be able to understand my anguish. I did not want to be at odds with him right now. And I had so little faith left in myself or my judgment that when he questioned it, it felt like an attack.

  I heard Ash’s whisper to him. “You know he is right. First, you must rebuild your strength and endurance. I can help with that. ”

  I did not hear the Fool’s muffled response. But I heard Ash say, “And I can help with that as well. When the time comes, all will be ready. ”

  I spoke when I knew I had control of my voice. No anger, no hurt rode my words. “Tell me of those who follow the woman. Not the mercenaries she hired, but the pale folk. They puzzle me. They are Whites or part-White. If the Servants treat the Whites so badly, why do they follow her and do her bidding? Why must we kill them? Surely they would welcome being free of her?”

  He shook his head slowly. His voice was calm and informative. Did he wish to smooth things over as badly as I did? “Children believe what they are told. They are on ‘a path,’ Fitz. They know nothing except obeying her. If they are not useful to her, then they are useless. And the useless are discarded. Euthanized when they are small, gently if they are fortunate. They will have seen some of their fellows given a night draught of poison. The ones who were intractable or did not manifest any talent become as slaves. Those who have a little talent are kept if they are obedient. Some come to believe everything they are told. They will be ruthless in following her orders. They will obey her even to giving up their lives. Or taking any life that opposes them. They are fanatics, Fitz. Show them any mercy and they will find a way to kill you. ”

  I pondered silently for a time. Ash had gone very still, and was listening as if he were absorbing every word. I cleared my throat. “So. There will be no hope of them rising against Dwalia. No hope of converting them to our cause. ”

  “If you find the ones who took her … not just the mercenaries they’ve hired. I mean the ones who made this plan. The luriks. Dwalia. They may seem kindly to you. Or young. Misguided. Or as if they were simply servants, obeying orders. Don’t trust them. Don’t believe them. Have no mercy, feel no pity. Every one of them dreams of rising to power. Every one of them has witnessed what the Servants have done to their fellows. And each has chosen to serve them rather than defy them. Every one of them is more treacherous than you can imagine. ”

  I fell silent. And they were the ones who held Bee captive? I could pit my new guard against them, or ask Dutiful for seasoned troops. But my fury went cold as I imagined Bee, small as she was, scuttling for shelter in the midst of such a melee. Trampling hooves, swinging blades. Would Dwalia and her luriks kill my child rather than allow us to win her back? I could not bring myself to phrase that question.

  “They will never turn against Dwalia,” the Fool admitted reluctantly. “Even if you could engage them while they are within the Six Duchies, which I consider very unlikely, they will fight to the last death. They have been told so many tales of the outside world that they will fear capture much more than death. ”

  He fell silent for a time, pondering. Ash had put away his scissors and was sweeping up fallen hair. “So. Enough of badgering each other. We have agreed that we will go to Clerres. Let us set aside for now when we will go. And even how we will travel there. Let us lay what plans we may. Once we reach Clerres the school has its own fortifications we must win past. Even once we are inside, there is such a nest of evil spiders that it will take cleverness to root them all out. I think we must rely on stealth and cunning more than force of arms. ”

  Page 167

 

  “I am cunning,” Ash said quietly. “I think I might be of great use to you on such a mission. ”

  The Fool turned a speculative glance toward him, but “No,” I said firmly. “Despite all you have known in your short life, I do not take someone as young as you into a situation like that. We are not speaking of a knife in the dark, or a dose of poison in the soup. Dozens, the Fool has said. Perhaps scores. It’s no place for a youngster. ”

  I dropped into a chair beside him at the table. “Fool, this is not a light undertaking you are asking of me. Even if I can accept that every one of the Servants must die, I still must wonder if I can do it. I am as rusty at assassination as I am at axework! I will do all I can. You know that. Those who have taken Bee and Shun, yes. They ended their lives when they came to my home. They must die, but not in a way that endangers my daughter or Shun. And those who hurt you. Yes. But beyond that? You are speaking of slaughter. I think you imagine my abilities to be far greater than they are. ” My voice dropped as I had to add, “Especially my ability to deal death and not feel the cost. And when we reach Clerres? Do all of them truly merit death?”

  I could not read the cascade of emotions that flickered over his face. Fear. Despair. Incredulity that I would doubt his judgment. But it ended with him shaking his head sorrowfully. “Fitz, do you think I would ask for this were there any other way? Perhaps you think I seek this purely for my own survival. Or vengeance. But it’s not. For every one we must kill, there are ten, a dozen, twenty held there in an ignorant slavery. Those, possibly, we can free, to go about whatever lives they can build for themselves. Children bred to one another like cattle, cousin to cousin, sister to brother. The malformed children they create, the ones born with no sign of their White bloodlines, are destroyed as carelessly as you might pull a weed from a summer garden. ” His voice shook and his hands trembled against the table. Ash reached toward him. I shook my head at him. I did not think the Fool wished to be touched just then.

  His words halted. He clasped his hands together tightly, and I watched him try to find calmness. Motley left off grooming herself and hopped closer to him. “Fool? Fool?”

  “I’m here, Motley,” he said as if she were his child. He extended his hand toward the sound of her voice. She hopped to his wrist and he did not flinch. She climbed up his sleeve, beak over claw, until she reached his shoulder. She began to preen his hair. I saw his clenched jaw relax. Still, his voice was flat and dead as he spoke. “Fitz. Do you understand that is what they intend for Bee? For our child? She is a valuable addition to their breeding stock, a strain of White blood they have not yet been able to add. If they have not already deduced she is mine, they soon will. ”

  Ash’s eyes flew wide open. He started to speak. A sharp gesture from me stopped him. I moved my hand to my heart and tried to calm it. I drew a deep breath. Ask the questions. “So. How long will this journey to Clerres take us?”

  “In truth, I can’t say with surety. When first I traveled from the school to Buckkeep, it was by a very roundabout route. I was young. More than once I lost my way, or had to take ship to a port other than the one I desired in the hope of finding a ship there that would take me closer to Buck. Sometimes I was months in one location before I had the wherewithal to travel on. Twice I was held against my wishes. Back then, my resources were very limited, and the Six Duchies little more than a legend to me. And when I returned to Clerres with Prilkop, we traveled part of the way by the stones. It still took us quite a time to get there. ” He paused. Was he hoping that I would offer to take him by that route again? If so, he would wait for a long time, even when my control of the Skill was restored. Chade’s current state had only increased my reluctance ever to enter them again.

  “But however we go, we had best start as soon as we are able. The dragon’s blood Ash gave me has had a remarkable effect on my health. If I continue to improve, if you can help me regain my eyesight … Oh, even if neither happens. We will wait for the messenger you hope for. But how long? Ten days?”

  There was no reasoning with him. I would not give him false promises. “Let us wait until the Rousters return with Thick and FitzVigilant. It will not be many days. And perhaps
by then your eyes will have improved as much as the rest of you. And if not, we will ask Thick and the rest of Nettle’s coterie to see if they can restore your vision. ”

  “Not you?”

  “Until Nettle judges my Skill to be controlled again, no. I will be in the room but I will not be able to help. ” I repeated aloud the promise I’d made to myself. “It’s time for me to cede to her true authority as Skillmistress. And respect her knowledge. She has warned me not to Skill. So I will not. But the others can help you. ”

  Page 168

 

  “But I … No, then. No. ” He suddenly lifted one scarred hand to cover his mouth. Both his fingers and his voice shook as he spoke. “I cannot. I just can’t let them … Not until you are recovered. Fitz. You know me. But those others … They could lend you their strength but you must be the one to touch me. Until then … No. I will have to wait. ” He snapped his mouth shut suddenly and abruptly crossed his arms on his chest. I could almost see hope depart from his body as his shoulders rounded in. He closed his blind eyes and I looked away from him, trying to give him space to compose himself. So quickly he had lost his dragon-blood courage. I almost wished he were quarreling with me still. To see him suddenly shaking in fear again was like a bellows blowing on the coals of my anger. I would kill them. All of them.

  Motley muttered to him. I stood and walked away from the table. I did not speak again until he could hear that I was not sitting and staring at him.

  “Ash. You have a deft hand with those scissors. Do you think you could take the stitches out of my brow? They are too tight. ”

  “They look like a puckered seam in a badly made dress,” Ash told me. “Come. Sit down here near the fire where the light is better. ”

  Ash and I talked while he worked, mostly his small warnings that he would now tug out a stitch or requests that I blot away the blood welling where the threads had been. We both pretended not to notice when the Fool gently set his crow down on the table and carefully groped his way to his bed. By the time Ash was finished with me, he was either truly asleep or feigning it well.

  The slow days ground by. Whenever I found myself pacing, I took myself down to the practice yards. I had one chance encounter with Blade’s grandson. He barely concealed his satisfaction at the drubbing he gave me. The second time I accepted his invitation to try our skills with staves against each other, he very nearly laid me out. Afterward, Foxglove drew me aside and asked me sarcastically if I enjoyed the beatings I was taking. I told her that of course I didn’t, I was simply trying to regain some of my old physical skills. But as I limped away to the steams, I knew I had lied. My guilt demanded pain, and pain was one of the few things that could drive Bee’s predicament from my thoughts. I knew it for an unhealthy tendency, but excused myself on the grounds that when finally I had a chance to use a blade against her kidnappers, I might have regained some of my ability.

  So it was that I was in the practice yards when the shout went up that the Rousters had returned. I touched the tip of my wooden blade to the earth to signify my surrender to my partner and went to meet them. Their formation was ragged and they rode as defeated and angry men do. They had their comrades’ horses, but were bearing no bodies home. Most likely they had burned them where they fell. I wondered what they had made of finding one man hamstrung, with his throat cut. Perhaps in all the blood, no one would have noticed his specific injuries.

  They ignored me as they led their horses to the stables. FitzVigilant had already dismounted and stood holding the reins of his mount, waiting for someone to take the horse. Thick, looking old and weary and cold, sat slumped on his sturdy beast. I went to his stirrup. “Come down, old friend. Put your hand on my shoulder. ”

  He lifted his face to regard me. I had not seen him look so miserable in a very long time. “They’re mean. They made fun of me all the way home. They bumped me from behind when I was trying to drink my tea and I spilled it all down my front. And at the inn, they sent two girls to tease me. They dared me to touch their breasts and then slapped me when I did. ” Tears came into his little eyes.

  He told me his troubles so earnestly. I pushed down my wrath to speak gently to him. “You are home and no one will hurt you anymore,” I promised him. “You are back with your friends. Come down. ”

  “I did my best to protect him,” Lant said behind my shoulder. “But he could not seem to stay clear of his tormentors, or ignore them. ”

  Having had the care of Thick more than once, I understood well enough. The little man did seem to have the knack for putting himself into the most trouble he could find: Despite his years, he still had difficulty telling mockery from good-natured joking. Until it was too late. And like a cat, he was inevitably most attracted to those who had the least tolerance for him. Those most likely to torment him.

  But once he had been able to evade actual physical damage.

  I spoke very softly. “Could not you Skill them, Don’t see me, don’t see me?”

  He scowled. “They tricked me. One would say, ‘Oh, I like you, be my friend. ’ But they would be mean. Those girls, they said they would like me to touch them. That it would be fun. Then they slapped me. ”

  Page 169

 

  I winced for the hurt in his eyes and drooping mouth. He coughed, and it was a wet cough. Not good.

  “Every one of them deserves a good thrashing, is what I think. Sir. ” I turned to find Perseverance approaching. He led three horses. The roan, Priss, and a dappled gelding from my stables. Speckle. That was his name.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded and then took in the boy’s appearance. His right eye was blacked and that cheek well bruised. I recognized that someone had backhanded him. I knew that type of injury well. “And what happened to you?” I demanded before he could answer my first question.

  “They hit Per, too,” Thick volunteered.

  Lant looked flustered. “He tried to intervene that night at the inn. I told him it would only make things worse and it did. ”

  I was confronted by incompetence, inexperience, and stupidity. Then I looked at Thick’s woeful face and mentally changed stupidity to naïveté. Thick had never outgrown his innocence. I was silent as I helped him dismount. Thick coughed again and could not seem to stop. “Lant will take you to the kitchens and see that you get a hot, sweet drink. Per and I will take the horses. Then, Lant, I suggest you present yourself to King Dutiful to give your report. Thick will give his at the same time. ”

  Lant looked alarmed. “Not Lord Chade?”

  “He’s very ill right now. ” Thick was still coughing. He finally caught a wheezing breath. I relented a little. “Be sure Thick eats well and then take him through the steams. Then I will hear your report at the same time as the king does. ”

  “Badgerlock, I rather think …”

  “Prince FitzChivalry,” I corrected him. I looked him up and down. “And do not make that mistake again. ”

  “Prince FitzChivalry,” he said, accepting the correction. He opened his mouth and then shut it again.

  I turned away from him, holding his horse’s reins and Thick’s. “That wasn’t the mistake,” I said without looking back. “I meant your trying to think. But do not call me by that name again. Not here. We are not ready for it to be common knowledge that Badgerlock and FitzChivalry are one and the same. ”

  Per made a small choking sound. I did not look at him. “Bring those horses, Perseverance. You’ll have time to explain yourself to me while you settle them. ”

  The Rousters had gone into what I still thought of as the “new” stables, the ones built since the Red-Ship Wars. I did not want to see them just now. I wanted to be calm when I dealt with them, not merely appear calm. Per followed and I led him and the horses behind the new stables to Burrich’s stables, where I had grown up. They were not used as much as they once had been, but I was pleased to see they were kept clean and that there were empty stalls rea
dy for the horses we brought. The stable boys were in awe of me and scampered so swiftly to the needs of the beasts that Per found very little to do. The other stable boys seemed to recognize him as one of their own, and perhaps thought the bruises on his face were my doing, for they were very deferential to me.

  “Isn’t this Lord Derrick’s roan?” one of them dared to ask of me.

  “Not anymore,” I told him, and was taken aback by the warm confirmation I received from the mare. My rider.

  “She likes you,” Per told me from the next stall. He was brushing Priss. He’d let one of the other boys take Speckle but Priss he was doing himself.

  I didn’t ask him how he knew. “What are you doing here?”

  “She’s muddy, sir. We were crossing an iced-over stream and she broke through and got her legs muddy. So I’m grooming her. ”

  Technically, a truthful answer. This boy. I admired him grudgingly. “Perseverance. Why did you come to Buckkeep?”

  He straightened to look over the stall wall at me. If he was not genuinely surprised at my question, he was very good at dissembling. “Sir, I am sworn to you. Where else should I be? I knew you would want your horse, and I did not trust those … guardsmen to bring her. And I knew that you would need Priss. When we go after those bastards and take Bee back, she will want to ride her own horse home. Your pardon, sir. Lady Bee, I meant to say. Lady Bee. ” He caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it hard.

  I had intended to rebuke him and send him home. But when a youngster speaks as a man it’s not right to reply to him as a child. A stable girl had just arrived with a bucket of water. I turned to her. “Your name?”

  “Patience, sir. ”

  That jolted me for an instant. “Well, Patience, when Per is finished, would you show him where to get some hot food and where the steams are. Find him a bed in the …”

  Page 170

 

  “I’d rather stay near the horses, sir. If no one minds. ”

  I understood that, too. “Help him find some bedding, then. You can sleep in one of the empty stalls, if that’s what you wish. ”