Fool's Quest (47 page)

“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.”

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 ready 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 …”

“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.”

“Thank you, sir. It is.”

“Should I make him a poultice for that cheek? I know one that can draw the swelling down by morning.” Patience looked very pleased to be put in charge of Perseverance.

“Do you? Well, then, you should do that also, and I'll be pleased to see how well it works by the morning.” I started to leave and then remembered the pride of a boy. I turned back. “Perseverance. You are to stay well away from any of the Rousters. Am I understood?”

He looked down. “Sir,” he acknowledged me unhappily.

“They will be dealt with. But not by you.”

“They're a bad lot,” Patience said quietly.

“Stay clear,” I warned them both, and left the stables.

I was better. Everyone told me so, even Shun. I was not sure they were right, but it was too much trouble to argue with them. My skin had finished peeling and I no longer had a fever. I did not tremble and I could walk without staggering. But it was harder to listen to people, especially if more than one person was talking at once.

The traveling had become harder. And there was more tension between Dwalia and Ellik. We had to cross a river and they wasted most of an evening arguing about where. It was the first time I'd seen conflict between them. They had a map, and they stood not at our fire nor at the Chalcedeans' but between the two and pointed and argued. There was a ferry at one village. Dwalia argued it would be too hard for Vindeliar. “Not only must he keep anyone else waiting to cross from recalling us, he must fog the ferrymen. Not once, but three times before we have all the sleighs and horses across.”

There was a bridge that Dwalia favored, but to reach it we would have to travel through a large town. “It is the perfect place for an ambush,” Ellik objected. “And if he cannot fog the ferry workers, how can he fog a city?”

“We travel in the dead of night. Swiftly through the city, across the bridge, and then swiftly away from the trading town on the other side.”

I leaned against Shun. Her whole body was tense, she was so focused on eavesdropping. I was tired of them talking and longed for quiet. Quiet and real food. The hunting had been bad and all we had had for two days was porridge and the brown soup. The sleighs were loaded, the horses harnessed. The Chalcedeans were mounted and waited in formation. The luriks stood by their mounts. All were waiting for Ellik and Dwalia to find an agreement. The bridge tonight or the ferry tomorrow? I didn't care. “How did they get to this side of the river in the first place?” I asked Shun quietly.

“Shut up,” she said in such a snip of voice that only I heard it. That had made me struggle to be alert and hear more.

Dwalia was speaking. I could tell she was nervous. Her hands were fists, clasped to her bosom. “The ferry is too close to Buckkeep. We need to cross soon and then be away. Once we are across the river, we can go through the hills …”

“The hills again. Unless you are willing to travel on the roads, the sleighs will bog down in the unpacked snow,” Ellik spat. “Abandon the sleighs. They have only slowed us down since you stole them.”

“We no longer have the cart. We'd have to abandon the tents.”

“Then leave them.” Ellik shrugged. “We will travel more swiftly without them. Your female insistence on these comforts is what slows us down.”

“Don't look at them,” Shun hissed by my ear. I'd been staring. They did not usually quarrel for long. Usually Vindeliar came, and smiled and bobbed, and then we did as Dwalia wished. I slitted my eyes and pretended to be dozing. I could see Dwalia's frustration. She glanced over at us and Shun leaned forward and poked at the dying fire.

Then Vindeliar came wandering over. He was smiling as he always was. He paused by our fire and looked around, puzzled. “Why aren't you on the sleigh? Shouldn't we leave soon?” The night was darkening around us. Usually by that time we were well away from the day's campsite.

Dwalia lifted her voice to respond to him. “Yes. We should be leaving very soon. Be patient, Vindeliar. Come wait with me while Ellik decides what we must do.”

Then, for the first time, I watched and saw clearly what Vindeliar did. He smiled and almost wriggled like a chubby little boy as he sidled up to Dwalia. He looked at Ellik, tilting his head. The man scowled at him. Dwalia spoke softly. “So, as the duke has said, he considers the ferry crossing too dangerous for us. It is much too close to Buckkeep. But if we make haste, he says we could reach the bridge tonight. And perhaps cross and even be in the foothills before the sun is very high. And thence to Salter's Deep and the ship.”

Ellik scowled. “That is not what I said,” he growled.

Dwalia was suddenly and immediately apologetic. She clasped her hands under her chin and bowed her head. “I am so sorry. What was it you had decided?”

He looked well pleased at her chastened demeanor. “I decided we would take the bridge. Tonight. If you can muster your lazy folk and get them mounted and on the road, we may well be in the foothills before the sun is too high.”

“Of course,” Dwalia said. “When you put it like that, it's the only sensible thing to do. Luriks! Mount! Commander Ellik has made his decision. Odessa! Get the shaysim into the sleigh right away. Soula and Reppin, get to the final loading! He wishes us to depart immediately.”

And Ellik had stood, smiling with satisfaction to see us all scramble to his orders. Snow was kicked over the dying fires, and I was hurried into the sleigh. I feigned weakness and the luriks quickly gave me over to Shun's care. Vindeliar and Dwalia were the last to climb on board. I had never seen anyone look more satisfied than the two of them.

Ellik barked his commands and our company began to move. When we had gone a little way, I breathed to Shun, “Did you see that?”

She misheard me. “I did. We are not far from Buckkeep. Be quiet.”

And I was.

We made the crossing that night. As we drew closer to the river town, Vindeliar left the sleigh. He mounted a horse and rode at the head of our procession beside Ellik. And later that morning, when we finally reached a forested area of the foothills and made a camp, Ellik bragged to all about how simple it had been. “And now we are on the northern side of the Buck River, with little between us and our goal but a few small towns and the hills. As I told you. The bridge was our best choice.”

And Dwalia smiled and agreed.

But if she and Vindeliar had tricked him into choosing the bridge instead of the ferry, it still did not make our journey through the hills any easier. He had been right about the sleighs. Dwalia insisted we must do our best to avoid roads, and so the soldiers and their horses broke trail for the heavier beasts that pulled the sleigh. Our passage was not easy and I could tell that Ellik chafed at how little we moved forward each night.

Shun and I had little time to speak privately. “They mentioned a ship,” she said to me once as we crouched in the bushes, relieving ourselves. “That may give us a chance of escape, even if we must leap into the water. Whatever happens, we must not let them take us out to sea.”

And I agreed with that, but wondered if we would have any opportunity to flee our captors.

I was slowly recovering, but the poor food and the constant travel and sleeping cold made me feel as if they created an illness of their own. One evening as we rose to commence our route, I felt almost dizzy with hunger for something more sustaining than porridge. As I followed Shun from the tent to the fireside, I spoke carelessly to her. “I'm going to die soon if I don't get a real meal.”

Several of the others halted and turned to stare at me. Alaria lifted a hand to cover her mouth. I ignored the gawkers. As always, the luriks had built two campfires, one for us and one for the soldiers. The luriks did all the cooking, but there was no shared meal at the end of the day's rest. Always two of them carried a steaming pot of the porridge they cooked and left it with the soldiers. We always ate separately. Tonight the soldiers had killed something and were roasting it over the fire. Their fire was closer to ours than it usually was, for the clearing we were in was small. The meat smelled very good, and I snuffed at the hearty scent on the cold night air.

Careful of that, too,
Wolf-Father warned me. I looked around our fireside and then frowned to myself. “Where is Vindeliar?” I asked.

“He goes ahead of us. We must travel on the roads tonight. We will pass through a little town and he goes to smooth the way for us,” Dwalia told me.

I decided that she only spoke to me in the hope of having me say something back to her. I took a chance. I sniffed, loudly. “The meat smells good,” I said and gave a small sigh.

Dwalia folded her lips. “A serving of that meat would cost more than any here are willing to pay,” she said sourly.

I had not realized that the soldiers had been listening in. One brayed a boorish laugh. “For a piece of meat from the Buck woman we'll give you a piece of this rabbit!” Then they all laughed. Shun had taken a seat beside me on the log. She huddled into herself, going smaller. Panic grew in me. She was the adult whom my father had bade look after me. I could not tell if the look on her face was anger or fear. But if she was afraid, how much more terrified should I be? It made me more frightened than I'd ever been, and somehow angrier, too. I stood up.

“No!” I shouted the word at the leering men. “That never happens in any future I see. Not even the one in which her hidden father leaves every one of you in bloody shreds!” I swayed, sat down suddenly, and would have fallen if Shun had not caught me as I collapsed toward her. I felt sick. I had given away a piece of my power. I had not meant to share that dream. It still made no sense to me. They had not been men in the dream but pennants, hung in tattered shreds from a laundry line, dripping blood. A dream that made no sense. I could not have said why I mentioned a hidden father.

“Shaysim!”

There was shock in Dwalia's tone. I turned my face toward her. I looked into her disapproving eyes and tried to appear like a younger child surprised in mischief.

“Shaysim, it is not our way to speak dreams to any who might be listening. Dreams are precious and private things, our guideposts to the many paths that exist. Choosing among the paths requires great knowledge. When we reach Clerres you will learn many things. One of the most important things will be to record your dreams privately or only with a scribe chosen for you.”

“Clerres?” The old soldier, Ellik, had come to stand behind Dwalia. He stood straight but his belly still pushed out from his vest. In the light of the fire, his eyes were pale like shadowed snow. “After we board the ship, we are bound directly for Chalced, and Botter's Bay. That was our agreement.”

“Of course,” Dwalia agreed smoothly. Despite her bulk, she lifted herself gracefully from her crouch to stand beside him. Did she avoid having him stand over her?

“And I won't have bad luck wished on me and my men. Certainly not by a moon-eyed pup like him.”

“The boy meant nothing. You need not be concerned.”

He smiled at her, an evil old man's confident smile. “I'm not concerned at all.” Then, without warning, he kicked me in the chest. I flew backward off the log, landing on my back in the snow. It knocked the air out of me. I lay gasping. Shun leapt up—to flee, I think—but he backhanded her across the face, knocking her sideways into a flock of luriks who had risen like birds to flutter to our aid. I expected them to fling themselves on the leader of the soldiers, to swarm over him and pin him down as they had the handsome rapist. Instead they seized Shun and dragged her away.

I felt Dwalia's fear soar. In a flash of insight, I realized that fog boy was away from the camp, telling people that they would not notice when we moved through their village tonight. Vindeliar was not here to exert his strength over Commander Ellik, so she stood alone against him. Odessa circled the log and seized me under the arms. She dragged me backward through the snow as Dwalia spoke. She seemed calm. Could no one else sense the fear that stormed inside her?

“He's just a boy, with a boy's way of shouting when he is angry. Or frightened. Were not you once a boy yourself?”

He looked at her flatly, not taken in by her effort at all. “I was a boy once. I was a boy who saw my father strangle my older brother for failing to show him respect. I was a smart boy. I needed only one lesson to learn my place.”

Odessa had dragged me to my feet. She stood behind me, her arms crossed over me to hold me up. I still didn't have my breath back. When Commander Ellik pointed his thick-nailed finger at me, I gave up any thought of taking a breath. “Learn. Or die. I don't care what name they call you by, boy, or what value they place on you. Still that tongue, or you and your whore-tender will be thrown to my men.” He turned and stalked away.