Wasps sting when their nest is threatened. I went to fetch a clay flowerpot for my mother. I took one from the top of the stack, not knowing that wasps had built a nest between it and the one below. They rushed out in a horde and chased me as I fled. They stung me over and over and the pain was like fire eating into my flesh. They are not like bees, who must weigh an attack against their own lives. Wasps are more like men, able to kill again and again, and still go on living. My cheek and neck were swollen, and my hand was a shapeless lump with sausage fingers. My mother put the sap of ferns and cool mud on the stings. And then took oil and a flame and killed them all, burning their nest and their unhatched children in vengeance for what they had done to her daughter. This was before I could speak clearly. I was astonished at her hatred of them; truly I had not known my mother capable of such cold anger. When I stared at her, as the nest burned, she nodded to me. ‘While I live, no one shall hurt you and go unpunished for it.’ I knew then I must be careful of what I told her about the other children. My father may once have been an assassin. My mother remained one.
Bee Farseer’s journal
There are so many songs about sailing off the edge of the world. Some say one goes over an immense waterfall and reaches a land of gentle and wise people and strange animals. In other tales, the sailors reach a land of intelligent talking animals who find humans disgusting and rather stupid. The one I liked best was the tale of sailing off all known charts and finding a place where you are still a child, and you can speak with the child and warn him to make better choices. But on this voyage, I had begun to feel that when one sailed off the edge of the world, one entered a realm of endless work and boredom and the same watery horizon every day.
The reality of sailing off the edge of all known charts was that one man’s unknown territory was another man’s pond. Paragon asserted that he had been to Clerres and the adjacent islands when he was Igrot’s ship, and that even Kennit had been there as a boy. Igrot had been obsessed with fortune-tellers and omens, a trait that some stories said had been passed on to Kennit. The crew we had taken on in Divvytown included a competent navigator. She had never sailed to Clerres, but had a chart from her grandfather. She was a seasoned deckhand, and as the trade routes familiar to Althea and Brashen were lost in the distance, she spent most of her time with them. Nightly they consulted the stars and she called a course to Paragon and most nights he confirmed it.
The slow days melted one into another. There were minor diversions. One day when there was no wind to speak of Clef brought out a pipe and whistled us up a wind. If it was magic it was a kind that I could not feel and had never seen before. I pretended it was coincidence. Per got a splinter in his foot and it became infected. Althea helped me draw it out and treated it with two herbs I didn’t know. He was given a day to rest. Motley had become an accepted member of the crew. Any moment when she was not with Amber, she spent with Paragon. She rode on the figurehead’s shoulder or even on top of his head. When the winds were good and he cut through the waves, she flew before him.
The sad thing about boredom is that one only learns to value it when it is exploded by a disaster, or the threat of one. I witnessed the changing relationships among our crewmembers from a distance, watching the tensions that any long voyage or campaign brings. I hoped to see those interior storms break apart and pass us by, yet one afternoon, as I worked alongside Lant mending a sail, he said to me the words I had dreaded. ‘Kennitsson likes Spark. And he likes her too much.’
‘I’ve noticed that he likes her.’ In truth, I’d noticed that almost all the crew liked her. Ant had regarded her as a rival at first, and Brashen had shouted at the girl more than once for being reckless in her efforts to show herself the better sailor. But that competition had dissolved into a solid friendship. Spark was lively, friendly, capable and hard-working. She wore her dark curly hair in a thick unruly braid now and her bare feet were callused from racing down the deck and up the rigging. The sun had baked her as dark as polished wood, and the work had muscled her arms. She glowed with health and good fellowship. And Kennitsson’s eyes followed her as she worked, and he almost always managed to sit across from her at the galley table.
‘Everyone’s noticed it,’ Lant replied darkly.
‘And that’s a problem?’
‘It isn’t. Yet.’
‘But you think it will be?’
He gave me an incredulous look. ‘Don’t you? He’s a prince, accustomed to getting anything he wants. And he’s the son of a rapist.’
‘He isn’t his father,’ I said quietly, but could not deny the lurch of anxiety his words woke in me. I asked the next question carefully. ‘Is Spark worried by it? Did she ask you for protection?’
He paused before he answered. ‘No, not yet. I don’t think she sees the danger. But I don’t want to wait for something bad to happen.’
‘So are you asking me to intervene?’
He jabbed his needle through the heavy, folded canvas. ‘No. I just want you to know before something happens. So maybe you would back me, if it comes to that.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ I said quietly.
He turned to look at me, wide-eyed.
‘If you are wise, you will do nothing until Spark asks for your protection. She isn’t the sort of girl who runs and hides behind a man. If there’s a difficulty, she should be able to handle it. And I think the quickest way for you to make her angry would be to interfere before she’s asked for any help. If you want, I’ll speak to the captains about it. This is their ship to keep order on. I know you have feelings for Spark, but—’
‘Enough. I’ll do as you suggest.’ He bit the words off and then began sewing with some ferocity.
For the rest of that day I watched Spark and Kennitsson. There was no denying he was aware of her, and that she possibly enjoyed it. I did not see her flirting with him, but she laughed at his jokes. And I could see how Lant, constrained by both honour and duty, might chafe to see it. It made me both weary and envious of their youth. How many years had it been since I had felt the stabs of jealousy and the painful doubts of loving someone I could not claim? It was both a relief to be free of such turmoil, and a reminder of the years that I carried on my shoulders.
I teetered on the edge of interfering. I tried to decide if I should have a private conversation with Spark, but feared that would seem more like a rebuke to her. And if I spoke to Prince Kennitsson, I wondered how he would react. If his attention was but a friendly flirtation, I’d feel like a meddling fool. And if he had genuine feelings for Spark, I imagined he would react as I had when Lady Patience had tried to warn me away from Molly. The situation was complicated even more by my growing friendship with the young man. His pride still made him prickly, but it was evident that he was doing his best to become a solid sailor. He had become more adept at scrubbing out his own garments and generally tending to the tasks that servants had performed for him since his birth, though he was still uncertain of whether the crew was mocking him or joking with him when someone included him in a jest. His pride was a high wall for him to batter through, but he was trying.
More than once now I had slipped the butterfly cloak from its storage and ghosted the deck beneath it. On a ship where there was precious little privacy, it gave me a tiny hidden space when I could sit where no one would tread on me and be ignored by all. My lengthy time as Chade’s spy had eroded forever all guilt I might feel at being a party to other people’s conversations, but I did not deliberately seek them out on the ship. Ant’s close friendship with our Divvytown navigator was certainly not my business, nor did I attempt to hear the morose conversations between Althea and Brashen on the aft deck.
On the evening when I found my usual quiet place occupied by two of the Divvytown sailors having a smoke, I drifted forward soundlessly toward the foredeck. I halted what I hoped was a safe distance away and felt mild alarm to see Kennitsson stretched full length on the deck. I took two more cautious steps and could see that his eyes were closed, but his chest was rising and falling in the slow and steady rhythm of someone in a deep sleep.
Paragon spoke as softly as a parent by a sleeping child’s bed. ‘I know you’re there.’
‘I supposed you might,’ I said as softly.
‘Come closer. I’d like to talk to you.’
‘Thank you, but I think I’d best talk to you from here.’
‘As you wish.’
I nodded silently. I hunkered down on the deck, my back to his railing, leaned my head back and looked up at the stars.
‘What?’ the ship demanded. He had crossed his arms and was looking over his shoulder at me.
His face was so like mine as it had been in those years that I wasn’t sure if I were talking to him or myself. ‘Once, a long time ago, I tried to walk away from everything. From my family, from my duty. For a time, it seemed to make me happy. But it didn’t, really.’
‘You are referring to me restoring myself. To becoming the two dragons who have been trapped in this wood for six of your generations.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think I will be unhappy?’
‘I don’t know. I just think that you might want to reconsider. You have a family. You are loved. You are—’
‘I am trapped.’
‘I was, too. But—’
‘I do not intend to remain a ship. Save your breath, human.’ After a moment, he added, ‘You may resemble me, but I am not you. My circumstances are completely different. And I did not ask to awaken to this servitude.’
I thought of saying that I’d never desired the role my family had demanded of me. Then I wondered if I had. I watched Kennitsson’s chest rise and fall slowly. Very slowly. I started to go down on one knee beside him but the ship spoke. ‘He’s fine. Don’t wake him.’
The small charm engraved with his father’s profile lay in the hollow of his neck, the fine silver chain pressed firmly against his flesh. I thought of how much I’d dislike having anything that snug around my throat.
‘It doesn’t bother him,’ Paragon told me.
‘Can it speak to him?’
‘Why do you care? It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘It might be.’ Tread carefully, Fitz. I tried to wonder if discussing it with the ship were less volatile than bringing it up to Althea. I drew a careful breath. ‘There is a young woman on your deck named Spark. She is under my protection.’
The ship gave a snort of disdain. ‘I know her. She pleases me. And she scarcely needs your protection.’
‘She’s very capable, but I don’t wish to see her forced into circumstances where she has to defend herself. If it came to that, I don’t think it would go well for Kennitsson.’
‘What are you implying?’ the ship demanded and I felt the sudden press of his mind against my defences. I thickened my walls, too late. The ship’s upper lip lifted in what was almost a wolfish snarl. ‘You think so little of him?’
‘I’ve never heard anyone deny what his father did to Althea. And the wizardwood charm he wears is filled with his father’s thoughts. Why should I not be concerned?’
‘Because he is not his father! He does not carry his father’s memories.’ The ship paused and added ominously, ‘I carry them. I took them so that no one else would have to bear them.’
And then I was thrown face down on the rough wood of the deck. The skin was torn from my palms and knees by the impact. I tried to rise but a man’s weight was suddenly on my back, his thick forearm like a bar of iron against my throat. I struggled to rise but he was bigger than me, and heavier. His beard rasped against the side of my face and his voice was a growl as he said, ‘Such a tender little bit of manflesh you are. Buck as you will; I’ll tame you. I relish a lively ride.’ A hand gripped the hair on top of my head and pressed my face down against the wood. I tried to seize his arm and take it away from my throat, but the thick embroidered sleeves of his shirt slipped and slid in my grasp.
I tried to scream but I could not get any air. I braced my palms on the deck and tried to throw his body off mine. I heard another man laugh as the man on top of me pressed himself against me. As the forearm across my windpipe cut off all air and sparks floated in darkness before my eyes, I felt with horror what he intended for me.
I snapped back to awareness of myself as Fitz. I dropped my hands from gripping at a forearm that didn’t exist. I was panting with a boy’s fear and outrage. I staggered to my feet. I was furious and affronted and full of a black fear I could not vanquish. Never again! I vowed and then became completely myself. Not my pain. Not my fury and shame.
‘Kennitsson knows nothing of that,’ the ship went on softly, as if the storm of memories had never been. ‘Don’t leave, Buckman. Stay where you are, and I’ll share a bit more of Kennit’s youth with you. I’ve plenty of that. Plenty of hours of him crawling, torn and bleeding, to where Igrot could not reach him. Nights of fever wracking his body, days when his eyes were swollen to slits from the beatings. Let me share with you some of my wonderful family memories.’
I felt sickened but it only increased my outrage. ‘If he … if that was done to him, how could he bear to pass it on? How could he stand to become the same sort of monster?’
‘Interesting that another human does not understand it any more than I do. Perhaps it was his only way to be rid of it. To not be the victim by becoming the … victor? You cannot imagine the ways he fought the monsters that assailed his dreams. How he struggled to become everything that Igrot was not. Igrot pretended the finesse of a gentleman, sometimes. It was a façade and I’ve no idea where it came from.
‘The things he forced that boy to do and be, Kennit never understood. To dress as a fine little man in a lace shirt and serve Igrot at table, just so the pirate could later batter him and rip the garments from his body. Kennit was the one who took a hatchet to my face. Did you know that? I held him in my hands as he did it. Igrot laughed as he chopped my eyes away. It was our bargain. Kennit would blind me and Igrot would not rape him again. But Igrot never kept his word to anyone about anything. But we did. Oh, how we kept the promises we made in the dark and bloody nights!’
I heard the ship grind his teeth together. The wave of emotions that assailed me made my heart thunder and my breath come short. I wondered that Althea and Brashen did not come running. The ship spoke to my thought.
‘Oh, they guess and suspect, but they do not know all that happened on my decks. Neither are they privy to our conversation now. All those years, with my body trapped as a ship and my mind trapped as a battered boy! Until the day we killed them. He poisoned them all, with chips of my face ground and mixed into their soup. And when they were all sickened, all grovelling and clasping their bellies and too weak to stand, Kennit finished them. With the same hatchet he’d used to take my eyes, he took their lives, one by one and their blood and memories soaked into my decks. Every man who had watched him shamed and humiliated felt that hatchet. And Igrot, last of all. So lovingly he dismembered him.
‘So I have all those memories, too, Buckman.’ He stopped speaking for a time. He turned his back to me and stared out over the water. ‘Can you imagine, human? To have a young creature you love endure such things as you stand helplessly by? Unable to kill his tormentor without killing him? Over and over, I took his memories. Twice, I took his death, and held him safe until he could bear to return to his body again. I could dim those memories for him but I could not erase them.’
His voice became oddly distant as if he spoke of events that had happened a hundred years ago. ‘Kennit could not bear to keep those memories. He would have had to kill himself. So he killed me instead. We agreed to it. I no more wanted to live with those memories than he did. We killed them all, one by one, and Igrot last of all. Then Kennit gathered a fine share of the loot that was then on board, scuttled me and watched from the ship’s boat as I listed and took on water and finally capsized and sank.
‘I tried to die. I thought I would die. But I do not need air and I do not need food. I hung there, upside-down under the water. The waves pushed me about, and then a current caught me. And when I realized it was bearing me home, back to Bingtown, I let it. And so eventually they found me, hull up, in the mouth of Bingtown Harbour, a hazard to navigation. They dragged me in to a beach and pulled me up out of reach of the tides and chained me there. The mad ship. The pariah. And there Brashen Trell and Amber and Althea found me.’
There were stars in the clear night sky above us, and he cut smoothly through the waves, propelled by a light but constant wind. We could have been the only two living things in the world. The young man stretched on the deck had not moved and I wondered if Paragon held him under, immersed in sleep. I wondered how much of this tale he would share with Kennitsson, and why he had shared it with me.
‘I will give him none of it,’ the ship told me. ‘When I go as dragons, it will all go with me.’
‘Do you think the human memories will vanish when you become your dragons?’
‘No.’ He spoke with certainty. ‘The memories of dragons and the recall of the serpents that go between the egg and the dragon are what makes us whole. We forget nothing, not if we are properly cased and hatched. I will shake off this ship’s body and the shape of your flesh, but always I will carry with me the horror of what humans can do to one another for amusement.’
I found I had little to say to that. I looked down on the sleeping young man. ‘So he will never know what his father went through?’
‘He knows enough of it. What little Etta and Wintrow and Sorcor knew, he knows. He need not bear the actual memories. Why should he know more of it than that?’
‘To understand what his father did?’
‘Oh. Does knowing what the child Kennit endured make you understand what the man Kennit did?’
I listened to my heart beating. ‘No.’
‘Nor I. Nor would he. So why burden him with it?’
‘Perhaps so he would never do likewise?’
‘That bit of dragon womb the lad wears strapped to his throat, carved in his father’s likeness, was worn by his mother for many more years than Kennit. She spent her childhood as a whore. Can you conceive that she thought of Kennit as the first person to treat her with kindness? That she came to love him for saving her from that life?’
‘I did not know,’ I said quietly.
‘Believe me, Kennitsson knows more of rape than he would care to admit, and I doubt he will perpetuate upon others what his mother regards with abhorrence.’ He took in air and sighed it out, a sound like waves on fine sand. ‘Perhaps that was why his mother bound it so tightly about his throat before she allowed him to board.’
Kennitsson stirred. He rolled over and opened his eyes and stared wordlessly up at the sky. I held my breath and stood motionless. The cloak was not a perfect protection. It took on the texture and colour and seeming dimension of whatever was behind me, but the wind was ruffling it and I suspected that would look peculiar. Still he did not look toward me. He spoke to the sky, or the ship. ‘I should have been born on these decks. I should have grown up here. I’ve missed so much.’
‘We both have,’ Paragon replied. His voice was kindly. ‘There is no going back, my son. We will take what we have now, and keep it with us forever.’
‘When you turn into dragons, you will leave me.’
‘Yes.’
Kennitsson sighed. ‘You didn’t even have to think about it.’
‘Any other answer would be impossible.’
‘Will you come back to visit? Or will you just be gone forever?’
‘That I don’t know. How can I possibly know?’
Kennitsson sounded very young as he asked, ‘Well, what do you hope you will do?’
‘I think I will have to relearn how to be a dragon. And there will be two of us, me and yet not me. I cannot speak for what happens after. I can only say that for the days we have left together, I will be here with you.’
I ghosted away. That conversation was not for me. I had enough pain of my own without hearing another child abandoned by a father. I had stayed too long with the figurehead. It might be that both Amber and Spark would be sleeping. I moved across the deck in a series of pauses, avoiding the crew. In the dark of the companionway, I stood outside the door and silently removed the cloak. I gave it a shake and carefully folded it. I tapped lightly on the door three times. No one spoke so I eased it open.
The Fool was supine on the floor. A faint light came in the porthole, just enough to distinguish him there. ‘Fitz,’ he greeted me amiably.
I looked down at him and then at the upper bunk. ‘No Spark?’
‘On duty tonight. So. The butterfly cloak again?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I heard the snap of fabric outside the door. I guessed it was the cloak and you just confirmed it. Where were you spying?’
‘I wasn’t. It’s one way to be alone. To be invisible even when there are others nearby. But I did spend some time with Paragon.’
‘That’s a dangerous pastime. Stand clear, please.’ I moved until my back touched the door. He brought his knees quickly up to his chest and attempted to vault to his feet. He failed, crashing sideways into the bunk with a force that would leave bruises. He made not a squeak at the pain. Instead, he slowly stood, and then sat down on the bunk. ‘Not quite able to do that yet. But I will.’
‘I know you will,’ I said. If will alone could make a thing be, the Fool could master his old tumbler’s tricks.
I pulled my old pack out from under the bed. Reaching inside, I found the Elderling fire-brick and made sure it was upright before I tucked the folded cloak beside it. I reached past my folded clothing and Bee’s books. The tubes of Silver I felt through the shirt wrapping them. Chade’s exploding pots in the very bottom. As I resettled everything securely, I asked lightly, ‘Any more dreams, Fool?’
He made a dismissive sound. A moment later, he said, ‘I should have known that Paragon would be aware of my dreams. What did he tell you?’
‘Nothing about what you dream. But he did share with me, in an impressively vivid manner, a bit of what shaped Kennit.’ I wedged my pack back under the bunk in an upright position and sat down beside the Fool. I had to bow my head to fit. ‘What monsters humans are! I’d rather be a wolf.’
He surprised me by suddenly leaning on me. ‘Me, too.’ After a moment, he added, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been angry with you. That wasn’t fair. But it also wasn’t fair for you to doubt my dreams. Have you touched minds with Bee again?’
‘No. I’ve tried several times, but I can’t find her. I must be so careful. Chade is out there, raging like a storm. Twice he has come at me, demanding I join him. At first, I sensed Nettle there, too, and the coterie trying to bring him under control. To confine him to his body. The last time, I didn’t sense them at all. But if Chade is pursuing me and Bee gets caught up in that, it might very well burn out her abilities. She was very tentative, and I pushed her away. I know I confused her.’ I stopped. That was enough for him to know. My pain and shame were my own.
‘You didn’t tell me any of that.’
‘You were angry.’ I paused. ‘So. Your turn. What did you dream?’
He was quiet.
I tried to keep my voice light. ‘I suppose we both die. Again.’
He drew in a deep breath and his gloved hand sought my wrist. ‘I don’t want to sleep, Fitz. I sit up here in the bunk, in the dark both day and night, and I try not to sleep. Because I don’t want to dream. But I do. And the urge to speak the dreams, to write them down, is so strong it makes me ill. But I cannot write them down, for I’ve not enough sight, even if I had ink. And I don’t want to tell them to anyone.’
‘Not telling the dreams makes you sick?’
‘It’s like an obsession. The true dreams must be spoken and shared. At the very least, written down.’ He laughed low. ‘The Servants count on that. They harvest the dreams of those poor half-Whites like farmers harvesting grapes. Everything goes into their library of dreams and predictions. All is processed, like blowing the chaff from grain. All is preserved. Referenced and cross-referenced. Ready for them to employ, to see what they can predict and how they can profit from it.’ He leaned in hard to me like a child fleeing nightmares and I put my arm around him to brace him. He shook his head. ‘Fitz. They will know we are coming. They have Bee and they will know we are coming. This can’t end well for any of us.’
‘So tell me. Don’t let me go into this blind.’
He choked out a laugh. ‘Oh, no. I’m the one who goes into it blind, Fitz. You die. You drown. In darkness, in cold seawater and in blood you drown. There. Now you know. I don’t know what good it does us, but you know.’ I felt his shoulders slump in the dimness. ‘And I have the small relief of having told my dreams.’
Cold crept through me. My mouth might claim not to believe him, but my guts did. ‘Couldn’t I freeze to death?’ I asked in a falsely light voice. ‘I’ve heard that you just fall asleep and it’s done.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, and I heard the same effort in his voice. ‘I don’t get to decide how it happens. I’m simply told it does.’
‘And you?’
‘That’s the worst part. I think I live through it.’
I had a moment of relief. Then it died. He was not certain of his survival. ‘And Bee?’ My voice shook. ‘I know you’ve dreamed her alive. Do we save her? Does she go home?’
He spoke hesitantly. ‘I think she is like you. She is a crossroads of many possible futures. I’ve seen her wearing a crown with alternating spires of flame and darkness. But she also appears as broken manacles. One who frees things. And as the shattered vessel.’
‘What is the shattered vessel?’
‘Something broken beyond repair,’ he said quietly.
My child. Molly’s daughter. Broken beyond repair. Some part of me had known that her experience must do that to her. She would be as broken as the Fool and I were. Something inside my chest hurt at the thought. My voice creaked. ‘Well. Who wouldn’t break? I broke. You broke.’
‘And we both emerged stronger.’
‘We both emerged,’ I modified his words. I was never sure I understood what Regal’s torture had done to me. Part of me had died in that cell, both literally and figuratively. I was alive today. I’d never know if I’d lost more than what I had found. Useless to wonder. ‘What else?’ I demanded.
His head lolled forward slightly and then twitched up. I changed my question. ‘How long have you been awake?’
‘I don’t know. I doze off and then awaken and I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. Blindness is peculiar, Fitz. No day, no night. And not darkness, if you want to know.’
‘Any other dreams or thoughts you want to share with me?’
‘I dream of a nut that is dangerous to crack. Sometimes I hear a nonsense ditty: “The trap is the trapper and the trapper is trapped.” But it isn’t always dreams. Sometimes I see … like a crossroads, but one with an infinite number of paths starring away from a centre. When I was a youngster, I saw those often and clearly. After you brought me back to life, I didn’t see any for a long time. Not until Bee touched me in the market that day. That was incredible. I touched her and I knew she was the centre of a multitude of paths. She saw them, too. I had to draw her back from making too swift a choice.’
His voice faltered to a stop.
‘Then what happened?’ I demanded in consternation.
He gave a snort of laughter. ‘Then I believe you knifed me in the belly. A number of times, but I lost count after two.’
‘Oh.’ Cold roiled through me. ‘I wasn’t sure you recalled any of that.’ I felt the weight of his body against my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘It’s too late for that.’ He patted me with his gloved hand and straightened up with a sigh. ‘I’ve already forgiven you.’
What can one say to that?
He continued, ‘Paragon. When I looked up and saw Paragon as we came into dock at Trehaug … he was shining with pathways. There were others there, at that junction, leading back to Kelsingra or into Trehaug itself, but most were the ones that led to Clerres, the straightest, shortest ones, began with Paragon.’
‘So that was why you insisted we must stay with him?’
‘Now you believe in me?’
‘I don’t want to. But I do.’
‘I feel the same.’
Silence claimed us both. I waited. After a time, I realized he was deeply asleep. I moved him gently from my shoulder onto the bunk. I lifted his legs up onto the bed. It reminded me of how I used to put Hap back to bed after his nightmares, all those years ago. The Fool pulled his knees in closer to his chest and slept curled defensively. I sat down again on the edge of the bunk. He would sleep and he would dream, whether he would or no.
And I would Skill.
I exhaled slowly, letting my breath blow away my boundaries and immediately became more aware of the ship. ‘Excuse me,’ I muttered as if I had bumped against a stranger in a crowd. Then I ignored his presence and reached out, feeling for the Skill-current. It was there, but it was calmer than I’d felt it in months. It was as constant as the wind that gently filled the sails and pushed us through the waves. I moved with the Skill-current, letting it carry my thoughts and will toward Buckkeep and to my daughter Nettle.
She was sleeping. I eased into her dream thoughts, woke her gently. How are you, and your child?
Chade’s dead.
The news flew from her mind to mine, drenching me with her urgency that I know. Her grief swept in and woke my as-yet-unformed sorrow. For a time, that was all there was. I did not ask her how. He was old, it had been coming for a very long time. Deprived of the herbs and kept from the Skill that he had been using for so long to rejuvenate himself, his years had caught up to him.
I blame myself. We gave him delvenbark to quench his Skill. He had grown so randomly strong with it. He would be calm, and then he was like a cold wind blasting. Two of the new apprentices decided to leave the training because his spells were so frightening. Even Shine had come to dread his moments of strength, for no matter how she deadened herself, he would seize her and tumble her into the Skill with him. She was terrified. As were we all!
So I authorized the delvenbark. I changed all the pages who had been carrying out his errands. I suspect they were fetching more than food and wine for him! After three days of it, it blocked his Skill, and he became … an old man. Kindly but fretful, and old. We let him have visits with Shine again; I’d had to keep her away from him. He … he didn’t seem to understand why we had kept his daughter away. He was so confused. He would talk to Shrewd’s portrait … Oh, Fitz, I fear he died thinking I was needlessly cruel, that I had taken his daughter and his magic from him, simply for meanness. Simply to control him.
I felt Riddle. He’d heard her crying, I surmised, and awakened. I felt him as if he were armour closing around her, hammered metal holding her in and upright. Anything that wanted to hurt her would have to go through him first. I thought grief had numbed me, but suddenly relief soared in my heart. I am glad Riddle is there with you.
So am I. I’ll tell him that.
Did you get our bird messages?
Yes. Chade’s message from Lant was clutched in his hand. I don’t know how many times Shine read it aloud to him, Fitz. He was smiling when we found him. A calm, sweet smile.
I realized abruptly, I have to tell Lant. Then, I can’t.
Your first thought was correct. You must tell him. As I had to tell you.
I will. I didn’t know how or when, but I would tell him. And Spark. I wondered if I now understood the Fool’s compulsion to speak of his dreams. I did not want to tell them. Yet I desperately wanted to share the news, as if grief were a heavy burden to be spread out among those who must bear it.
Yes, she agreed with me. And it’s good to know you are alive. I have reached out to you over and over these last few days. When none of us could reach you with the Skill, we feared the worst.
I’m on a liveship His presence is … pervasive. Even as I Skilled to her I could feel the ship sharing what I told her. I am sorry to have worried you.
I understand. I will immediately wake Dutiful to tell him.
Then my own news burst from me without warning. The Fool has dreamed that Bee is alive. And the last time I could reach you with the Skill, when Chade so abruptly parted us? I felt Bee. I knew her touch.
The winds of all the worlds blew between us and the shushing of waves whispered against every shore. What news was more shocking? That Chade had died or Bee might still live?
I felt her shock pour through me. Where is she? How is she? Have they mistreated her? Does she think we abandoned her? How did she survive passing through that Skill-stone? How is it possible she lived and we gave up on her, for months!
I don’t know. That was the torment of it, so much I didn’t know. I was not going to tell my pregnant daughter that her small sister was miserable and mistreated. That I would lie about, with a clear conscience. I agonized enough for the both of us. I would not put that burden on her. I had just a brush of her against my senses. I know she is bound for Clerres, as are we. I do not know if she is ahead of us or behind us. Only that she is on a ship bound for Clerres. That was all. And the Fool dreamed of her, alive. It’s little to go on, but I will take heart from it.
Her thoughts suddenly swept over me, a mistress of war awakened. I will muster an army of warriors and Skill-users. Elliania has brought up this proposal more than once to me. We will come. We will take back what is ours and leave nothing but ruins and bodies.
No! For now, do not send any vast force in this direction. We think our best chance is to go in quietly.
You will negotiate for her return?
That thought had never even occurred to me. I had set out on a mission of vengeance, planning only to kill. The thought of Bee in their hands had only made me more determined to see their blood.
I am still on a ship, bound for Clerres. I will decide when I arrive there and study the situation. Perhaps I shall negotiate. There were many ways to negotiate. Taking hostages immediately sprang to mind. My thoughts went winging off, and I knew that Nettle sensed that.
How are you? I asked her.
Heavy. Tired. Happy. Sometimes.
Sometimes. When she was thinking of her baby rather than the death of Chade or the torment of her small sister. I’m sorry I woke you. And sorry that Chade is gone. I will tell Lant. And you should rest now.
She laughed. Rest. While thinking of little Bee in the hands of kidnappers. Oh, Da, does life ever become simple?
Only for a few moments, my dear. Only for a few moments.
I drew myself away from her as if we were unclasping hands. For a time longer, I floated in the Skill. I wondered if some remnant of Chade remained in this flow, some ghost of Verity or perhaps even my father. I had encountered presences in the Skill. I was not sure what they were, only that they were far larger beings than I was. Larger? Richer, deeper, more fully formed. Eda and El? Ancient Elderlings or Skill-users who had acquired more presence in that flow?
I gathered my courage. Bee. Can you hear me? I formed an image of my little girl in my mind. Little Bee. I saw her in her old-fashioned clothing, I saw her doubting gaze as she looked up at me. I smelled the fading scent of honeysuckle on a warm summer night. Then I saw all the ways I had failed her. No. This was not helping. I’d never find her that way.
I pushed aside reluctance and tried to reconstruct that moment of contact we’d had. With Chade rushing down on us like a summer squall on a small boat, pushing and scattering and threatening.
Fitz, my boy!
An echo in the vast current of Skill. A brief recollection of Chade, like a perfume on a spring breeze. Dead. Gone.
The flood of loss was too much. I tried again to reach for Bee but I was groping in dark water. My child was as gone as Chade was.
I drew back from the Skill-current, and opened my eyes to the darkness of the Fool’s chamber. He was sleeping deeply. There was no one else in the room. Sitting on the floor, I pulled my knees up tight to my chest and bowed my head over them. Chade’s boy wept.