Fool’s Errand (Tawny Man Trilogy Book One) by Robin Hobb (27)

For a day and a night, the Old Blood healer kept Prince Dutiful in a stupor. I knew it frightened Lord Golden, despite Laurel’s efforts to reassure him that she had seen this before and the healer was only doing what needed to be done. For myself, I envied Dutiful. No such comfort was offered me, and very little was said to me. Perhaps part of it was ostracism; when one separates oneself from supporting a society, one loses the support of that society as well. But I do not think it was completely callous cruelty. I was an adult as well as an outcast, and they expected me to deal with my loss in my own way. As strangers, there was very little they could say, and absolutely nothing they could do that would help me.

I was aware of the Fool’s sympathy, but in a peripheral way. As Lord Golden, he could say little to me. The death of my wolf was an isolating and numbing thing. The loss of Nighteyes’ companionship was cutting enough, but with him had gone my access to his keener senses. Sound seemed muted, and night darker, scent and taste dulled. It was as if the world had been robbed of its brightness. He had left me behind to dwell alone in a dimmed and stale place.

I built a funeral pyre and burned my wolf’s body. This obviously distressed the Old Blood folk, but it was my way of mourning and I took it. With my knife, I cut my hair and burned it with him, thick hanks of both black and white. With him went a long, airy lock of tawny gold. As Burrich had once done for Vixen, I stayed the day by the fire, battling the rain that strove to quench it, adding wood whenever it began to die, until even the wolf’s bones were ash.

On the second morning, the healer allowed the Prince to wake. She sat by him, watching him come out of his drugged stupor. I stood aside, but kept my own watch. I saw awareness come back slowly, first to his eyes and then to his face. His hands began to make a little nervous kneading motion, but the healer reached over and stilled them with one of her own. ‘You are not the cat. The cat died. You are a man, and you must go on living. The blessing of Old Blood is that they share their lives with us. The curse is that those lives are seldom as long as our own.’

Then she rose and left him, with no more than that to ponder. In a short time, Deerkin and his fellows mounted and rode away. I noticed that he and Laurel found a time to speak privately before he left. Perhaps they mended some broken family tie. I knew that Chade would ask me what they had said, but I was too dispirited to attempt to spy on them.

The Piebalds had left several horses behind when they fled. One was given over by the Old Bloods to the Prince’s use. It was a little dun creature, its spirit as dull as its hide. It suited Prince Dutiful perfectly, as did the steady drizzle of rain. Before noon, we mounted and began our journey back to Buckkeep.

I rode alongside the Prince on Myblack. She had recovered from the worst of her limp. Laurel and Lord Golden rode ahead of us. They talked to one another, but I could not seem to follow their conversation. I do not think they spoke softly and privately. Rather, it was part of the deadening of my world. I felt numbed and dazed, half-blind. I knew I was alive because my injuries hurt and the rain was cold. But all the rest of the world, all sense and sensation, was dimmed. I no longer walked fearlessly in the darkness; the wind no longer spoke to me of a rabbit on a hillside or a deer that had recently crossed the road. Food had lost all savour.

The Prince was little better. He managed his grief as graciously as I did, with surliness and silence. There was, I suppose, an unspoken wall of blame between us. But for him, my wolf would live still, or at least would have died in kindlier circumstances. I had killed his cat, right before his eyes. Somehow it was even worse that a spiderweb of Skill attached us still. I could not look at him without being aware of just how completely miserable he was. I suspect he could feel my unspoken accusation of him. I knew it was not just, but I was in too much pain to be fair. If the Prince had kept to his name and his duty, if he had stayed at Buckkeep, I reasoned, then his cat would be alive, and my wolf as well. I never spoke the words aloud. I didn’t need to.

The journey back to Buckkeep was miserable for all of us. When we reached the road, we followed it north. None of us desired to visit Hallerby and the inn of the Piebald Prince again. And despite Deerkin’s assurances that Lady Bresinga and her family had had no hand in the Piebalds’ plot against the Prince, we stayed well away from their lands and keep. The rains came down. The Old Blood folk had left us what they could of supplies, but it was not much. At the first small town we came to, we spent the night in a dismal inn. There Lord Golden paid handsomely for a messenger to take a scroll by the swiftest way possible to ‘his cousin’ in Buckkeep Town. Then we struck out cross-country, heading for the next settlement that offered a ferry across the Buck River. The detours took us two extra days. We camped in the rain, ate our scanty rations, and slept cold and wet. I knew the Fool anxiously counted the dwindling days before the new moon and the Prince’s betrothal ceremony. Nonetheless, we went slowly, and I suspected that Lord Golden bought time for his messenger to reach Buckkeep and alert the Queen to the circumstances of our return. It might have been, also, that he tried to give both the Prince and me some time to deal with our bereavement before we returned to the clatter and society of Buckkeep Castle.

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate bereavement, both the Prince and I passed into the grey days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

It did not help my temperament that Lord Golden and Laurel did not find the way as tedious and lonely as the Prince and I did. They rode before us, stirrup to stirrup, and though they did not laugh aloud or sing gay wayfaring songs, they conversed near continuously and seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in one another’s company. I told myself that I scarcely needed a nursemaid, and that there were excellent reasons why the Fool and I should not betray the depth of our friendship to either Laurel or Dutiful. But I ached with loss and loneliness, and resentment was the least painful emotion I could feel.

Three days before the new moon, we came to Newford. As it was named, so it was, a fording and ferry that had not existed on my last journey through this area. It had a large dockyard, and a good fleet of flat-bottomed river barges were tied there. The little town around it was new, raw as a scab with its rough timbered houses and warehouses. We did not linger but went straight to the ferry dock and waited in the rain until the evening ferry was ready to cross.

The Prince held the reins of his nondescript horse and stared silently across the water. The recent rains had swelled the river and thickened it with silt, but I could not find sufficient love of life to be scared of death. The tossing and spray as the ferrymen struggled against the current seemed but one more annoying delay. Delay, I wondered sarcastically to myself. And what did I rush toward? Home and hearth? Wife and children? I had Hap still, I reminded myself, but on the heels of that thought I knew I did not. Hap was a young man striking out on his own. For me to cling to him now and make him the focus of my life would have been the act of a leech. So who was I, when I stood alone, stripped of all others? It was a difficult question.

The ferry lurched as we scraped gravel, and then men were drawing it in tighter to the bank. We were across. Buckkeep was a day’s ride away. Somewhere above the dense clouds, the sliver of old moon lingered. We would reach Buckkeep before Prince Dutiful’s betrothal ceremony. We had done it. Yet I felt no sense of elation or even accomplishment. I only wanted this journey to be finished.

The rain came down in torrents as we reached the landing, and Lord Golden declared firmly that we would go no further that night. The inn there was older than the town on the other side of the river. Rain masked the other buildings of the hamlet, but I thought I glimpsed a small livery stable, and a scatter of homes beyond it. The inn’s signboard was an oar painted on an old tiller, and the lumber of its walls showed weathered grey where its whitewashing had faded. The savage night had crowded the inn near full. Lord Golden and his party were too bedraggled to invoke the assumptions of nobility. Fortunately, he had sufficient coin to buy both the respect and awe of the innkeeper. Merchant Kestrel, as he identified himself, obtained two rooms for us, although one was a small one up under the rafters. This his ‘sister’ gamely declared would suit her admirably, and the merchant and his two servants would have the other. If the Prince had any qualms about travelling in disguise, he did not show them. Hooded and cloaked, he stood dripping on the porch with me until a serving-boy came out to tell us that our master’s room was ready.

As I passed through the entry, I heard a woman’s clear voice lifted in song from the common room. Of course, I thought to myself. Of course. Who else could better keep watch at an inn than a minstrel? Starling sang that ancient lay of the two lovers who defied their families and ran off to leap to their deaths for love of one another. I did not even glance into the room, though I saw Laurel had paused to listen by the door. The Prince followed me listlessly up the stairs to a large but rustic chamber.

Lord Golden had preceded us. An inn-boy was making up the fire while two others set up a bathing tub and draught screens in the corner. There were two large beds in the room, and a pallet near the door. There was a window at one end of the room. The Prince walked to it and morosely stared out into the night. There was a rack near the fire, and I fulfilled my role by helping Lord Golden out of his soaked and dirty cloak. I shrugged out of mine, hung them both to dry on the rack, and then pulled his wet boots off as a stream of servants moved in and out of the room, bringing buckets of hot water and a repast of meat pies, stewed fruit, bread and ale. They all moved with such precision that they reminded me of a troop of jugglers as they swept in as a wave and then likewise receded from the room. When they had vanished out of the door once more, I shut it firmly behind them. The hot water in the tub filled the room with the aroma of bathing herbs and I suddenly longed to lean back in it and seek oblivion.

Lord Golden’s words recalled me to the reality. ‘My prince, your bath is ready. Do you require assistance?’

The Prince stood. He let his wet cloak fall to the floor with a slap. He looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and brought it to the drying rack. He spread it there with the air of a boy used to attending to his own needs. ‘No assistance. Thank you,’ he said quietly. He glanced at the food steaming on the table. ‘Do not wait on me. I do not stand on formalities. I see no sense in your going hungry while I am bathing.’

‘In that, you are your father’s son,’ Lord Golden observed approvingly.

The Prince inclined his head gravely to the compliment but made no other response.

Lord Golden waited until Prince Dutiful had vanished behind the screens. From the landlord, he had secured paper, ink and quill. He sat down at a little table with these supplies, and busied himself silently for some moments. I walked over to the hearth with a meat pie from the table. I ate it standing while the fire at my back steamed some of the wet from my clothes. Lord Golden spoke to me as his quill scratched out a final line. ‘Well, at least we’re out of the weather for a time. I think we shall have a good sleep here, and go on tomorrow, but not too early in the morning. Does that suit you, Tom?’

‘As you wish, Lord Golden,’ I replied as he blew on the missive, then rolled it. He tied it with a thread drawn from his once-grand cloak. He handed it to me, one eyebrow raised.

I did not mistake his meaning. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said very quietly.

He left the writing table and went to where the food was spread. He began to serve himself, deliberately clattering dishes and pots as he did so. His voice was soft as he muttered, ‘And I would rather you did not have to go. But I cannot. Unkempt as I am, there are still folk here that might recognize Lord Golden and mark his interest in the minstrel. I’ve earned enough scandal to my name on this journey. Have you forgotten my actions at Galekeep? I’ve all of that to explain away when I return to Buckkeep. Nor can Dutiful go, and as far as I know, Laurel is ignorant of the connection. Starling might recognize her, but would look askance at a note delivered by her. So you it must be, I fear.’

I feared the same, and feared more the traitorous part of me that actually wished to go down the stairs and catch the minstrel’s eye. There is a part of any man that will do anything to stave off loneliness. It is not necessarily the most cowardly part of a man’s soul, but I’ve seen any number of men do shameful things to indulge it. Worse, I wondered if the Fool were not deliberately sending me down to her. Once before, when loneliness had threatened to devour my heart, he had told her where to find me. It had been a misguided comfort I took in her arms. I vowed I would not do so again.

But I took the tiny rolled message from his hand and slipped it up my bedraggled sleeve with the artless practice of long years of deceit. The feathers from the treasure-beach still rode there, securely strapped to my forearm. That secret, at least, still remained my own, and would until I had time to share it with him privately.

Aloud, he said, ‘I see you’re restless despite our long day. Go along, Tom. The Prince and I can fend for ourselves for an evening, and you deserve a bit of song and a quiet beer on your own. Go on now, I saw you cast a longing eye that way. We won’t mind.’

I wondered whom he thought to deceive. The Prince would know that my heart had no interest in anything but grief just now. In the Piebald camp, he had seen Lord Golden give way to my command and leave with the wolf. Nevertheless, I loudly thanked my master for his permission, and left the room. Perhaps it was a play we all acted for each other. I went slowly down the stairs. Laurel was coming up as I descended. She gave me a curious look. I tried to think of some words, but nothing came to me. I passed her silently, intending no slight but unable to care if she took offence. I heard her pause on the stair behind me as if she would speak to me, but I continued down.

The common room was crowded. Some had probably come for the music, for Starling’s reputation was grand now, but many others looked to be folk trapped by the downpour and unable to afford a room. They would shelter here for the night, and when the music stopped, doze the storm away at the tables and benches. I managed to get both food and a mug of beer on my assurances that my master would pay for it on the morrow. Then I walked to the hearth end of the room, and crowded myself into a corner table just behind Starling’s elbow. I knew it was no coincidence she was here. She had been watching for us to return, and likely she had access to a bird to pass word of us on to Buckkeep. So I was not surprised when she feigned not to notice me, and kept playing and singing. After three more songs, she declared she needed to rest her voice and wet her pipes. The serving-boy who brought her wine set it on the corner of my table. When she sat down beside me to drink, I passed her Lord Golden’s note under the table. Then I tossed off the last mouthful of beer in my mug and went out to the backhouse.

She was waiting for me under the dripping eaves when I returned to the inn. ‘The message has been sent,’ she greeted me.

‘I’ll tell my master.’ I started to walk past her, but she caught my sleeve. I halted.

‘Tell me,’ she said quietly.

Ancient caution guarded my tongue. I did not know how much information Chade had given her. ‘We completed our errand.’

‘So I guessed,’ she replied tartly. Then she sighed. ‘And I know better than to ask you what Lord Golden’s errand was. But tell me of you. You look terrible … your hair chopped short, your clothes in rags. What happened?’

Of all I had been through, only one event was mine to share or not as I pleased. I told her. ‘Nighteyes is dead.’

Rainfall filled her silence. Then she sighed deeply and put her arms around me. ‘Oh, Fitz,’ she said quietly. She leaned her head against my scratched chest. I could see the pale part in her dark hair, and I smelled her scent and the wine she had drunk. Her hands moved softly on my back, soothingly. ‘Alone again. It isn’t fair. Truly it isn’t. You’ve the saddest song of any man I’ve ever known.’ The wind gusted and rain rode it, to spatter against us, but still she held me, and a small warmth gathered between us. She said nothing more for a long time. I lifted my arms and put them around her. Just as it once had, it seemed inevitable. She spoke against my chest. ‘I’ve a room to myself. It’s at the river end of the inn. Come to me. Let me take your hurt away.’

‘I … thank you.’ That won’t mend it, I wanted to tell her. If she had ever known me at all, she would know that now. But words would not make her understand it if she could not sense it on her own. I suddenly appreciated the Fool’s silence and distance. He had known. No other closeness could make up for the lack of my wolf.

The rain went on falling. She loosened her hold on me and looked up into my face. A frown divided her fine brows. ‘You aren’t going to come to me tonight, are you?’ She sounded incredulous.

Strange. I had been wavering in my resolve, but the very way she phrased the question helped me to answer it correctly. I shook my head slowly. ‘I appreciate the invitation. But it wouldn’t help.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ She tried to make her voice light and failed. She moved, her breasts brushing against me in a way that might have been accidental but was not. I stepped a little back from her, my arms falling to my sides.

‘I’m sure. I don’t love you, Starling. Not that way.’

‘It seems to me that you told me that once before, a long time ago. But for years, it did help. It did work.’ Her eyes searched my face. She smiled confidently.

It hadn’t. It had only seemed to. I could have told her that, but it would have been an unnecessary honesty. So I said only, ‘Lord Golden expects me. I have to go up to him.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘What a grievous end to a sad tale. And I am the only one who knows the whole of it, and still I am not allowed to sing it. What a tragic lay it would make. You are the son of a king, who sacrificed all for his father’s family, only to finish as the ill-used servant of an arrogant foreign noble. He doesn’t even dress you well. The ignominy must cut you like a blade.’ She looked deep into my eyes, seeking … what? Resentment? Outrage?

‘It doesn’t really bother me,’ I replied in some confusion. Then, as if someone had drawn a curtain open and spilled out light, I understood. She did not know that Lord Golden was the Fool. She truly saw me as but his servant, passing a message to her on his behalf. For all of her minstrel cleverness, she looked at him and saw the wealthy Jamaillian lord. I fought the smile away from my face. ‘I am content with my position with him and grateful to Chade for arranging it. I am satisfied to be Tom Badgerlock.’

For a moment she looked incredulous. The look faded into disappointment in me. Then she gave a small shake of her head. ‘I should have known you would be. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Your own little life. To have no responsibility for your line or for what happens at court. To be one of the humble folk, counting for nothing in the long run.’

All my earlier efforts to spare her feelings seemed vapid now. ‘I have to go,’ I repeated.

‘Hurry along to your master,’ she released me. Her voice was a trained talent, and her scorn danced in it with a scorpion’s sting.

By a vast effort of will, I said nothing in reply. I turned and walked away from her back into the inn. I climbed the servants’ stairs to our quarters, tapped, and let myself in. Dutiful lifted his head from the pillow to regard me. His dark hair was sleeked back, his skin flushed from his bath. The effect made him look young. The Fool’s bed was empty.

‘My prince,’ I greeted him. Then, ‘Lord Golden?’ I queried the screened bath.

‘He left.’ Dutiful let his head drop back to the pillow. ‘Laurel tapped on the door and wished to speak with him privately.’

‘Ah.’ It almost made me smile. Wouldn’t that have intrigued Starling?

‘He asked me to be sure you knew we had left you the bathwater. And leave your clothes outside the door. He’s arranged for a servant to wash them and return them by morning.’

‘Thank you, my prince. It is most kind of you to tell me.’

‘Please lock the door, he said. He said he would knock and awaken you when he returned.’

‘As you wish, my prince.’ I stepped to the door and locked it. I doubted he would be back before dawn. ‘Is there anything else you require before I bathe, my prince?’

‘No. And don’t talk to me like that.’ He turned his back on me, shouldering into the bed.

I undressed. As I peeled off my shirt, I made sure the feathers went with it. I sat down for a moment on my low pallet before removing my boots. The feathers from the beach slipped from the shirt’s sleeve and under the thin blanket. I removed Jinna’s charm and set it on the pillow. I arose, set my clothes outside the door, locked it again and walked to the screened tub. As I climbed into the water, Dutiful’s voice followed me. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’

The water in the tub had cooled to lukewarm, but it was still far hotter than the rain outside had been. I peeled the healer’s bandaging from my neck. The scratches on my belly and chest stung as I lowered myself into the water. Then they eased. I sank further down to soak my neck as well.

‘I said, aren’t you going to ask me why?’

‘I suppose it’s because you don’t want me to call you my prince, Prince Dutiful.’ The salve on my injuries was melting in the water, perfuming the air with its aromatic scent. Golden seal. Myrrh. I closed my eyes and ducked under the water. When I came up, I helped myself to the little bowl of soap that had been left for the Prince. I worked it through what was left of my hair and watched the brown suds drip into the water. I ducked again to rinse it.

‘You shouldn’t have to thank me and wait on me and defer to me. I know who you are. Your blood’s as good as mine.’

I was grateful for the screen. I splashed a bit while I tried to think, hoping he would believe I hadn’t heard him.

‘Chade used to tell me stories. When he first started teaching me things. Stories about another boy he had taught, how stubborn he was, and also how clever. “When my first boy was your age,” he’d say, and then tell a story about how you’d played tricks on the washerfolk, or hidden the seamstress’s shears to perplex her. You had a pet weasel, didn’t you?’

Slink had been Chade’s weasel. I’d stolen Mistress Hasty’s shears on his orders, as part of my assassin’s training in theft and stealth. Surely Chade hadn’t told him that as well. My mouth was dry. I splashed loudly and waited.

‘You’re his son, aren’t you? Chade’s son and hence my – would it be a second cousin? On the wrong side of the sheets, but a cousin all the same. And I think I know who your mother was, too. She is a lady still spoken of, though none seem to know a great deal about her. Lady Thyme.’

I laughed aloud, then changed it into a cough. Chade’s son by Lady Thyme. Now there was an apt pedigree for me. Lady Thyme, that noxious old harpy, had been an invention of Chade’s, a clever disguise for when he wished to travel unknown. I cleared my throat and nearly recovered my aplomb. ‘No, my prince. I fear you are in vast error there.’

He was silent as I finished washing myself. I emerged from the tub, dried myself, and stepped out from behind the screen. There was a nightshirt on the pallet. As usual, the Fool had thought of everything. As I pulled it over my wet and bristly head, the Prince observed, ‘You’ve got a lot of scars. How’d you get them?’

‘Asking questions of bad-tempered folk. My prince.’

‘You even sound like Chade.’

An unkinder, more untrue thing had never been said of me, I was sure. I countered it with, ‘And when did you become so talkative?’

‘Since there was no one around to spy on us. You do know Lord Golden and Laurel are spies, don’t you? One for Chade and the other for my mother?’

He thought he was so clever. He’d have to learn more caution if he expected to survive at court. I turned and gave him a direct stare. ‘What makes you believe that I’m not a spy as well?’

He gave a sceptical laugh. ‘You’re too rude. You don’t care if I like you; you don’t try to win my confidence or my favour. You’re disrespectful. You never flatter me.’ He laced the fingers of his hands and put them behind his head. He gave me an odd half-smile. ‘And you don’t seem concerned that I’ll have you hanged for manhandling me back on that island. Only a relative could treat someone so badly and not expect ill consequences from it.’ He cocked his head at me, and I saw what I most feared in his eyes. Behind his speculation was stark need. His eyes bled unbearable loneliness. Years ago, when Burrich had forcibly parted me from the first dog I had ever bonded to, I had attached myself to him. I had feared the Stablemaster and even hated him, but I had needed him even more. I had needed to be connected to someone who would be constant and available to me. I’ve heard it said that all youngsters have such requirements. I think that mine went deeper than a child’s simple need for stability. Having known the complete connection of the Wit, I could no longer abide the isolation of my own mind. I counselled myself that Dutiful’s turning to me probably had more to do with Jinna’s charm than with any sincere regard for me. Then I realized it still lay on my pillow.

‘I report to Chade.’ I said the words quickly, without embellishment. I would not traffic in deceit and betrayal. I would not let him attach himself to me, believing me to be someone I was not.

‘Of course you do. He sent for you. For me. You have to be the one he said he’d try to get for me. The one who could teach me the Skill better than he can.’

Truly, Chade’s tongue had grown loose in his old age.

He sat up in his bed and began to tick his reasoning off on his fingers. I looked at him critically as he spoke. Deprivation and grief still shadowed his eyes and hollowed his cheeks, but sometime in the last day or so, he had realized he would live. He held up his first finger. ‘You’ve a Farseer cast to your features. Your eyes, the set of your jaw … not your nose, I don’t know where you got that from, but that’s not family.’ He held up a second finger. ‘The Skill is a Farseer magic. I’ve felt you use it at least twice now.’ A third finger. ‘You call Chade, Chade, not Lord Chade or Counsellor Chade. And once I heard you speak of my lady mother as Kettricken. Not even Queen Kettricken, but Kettricken. As if you’d been children together.’

Perhaps we had. As for my nose, well, that had come from a Farseer, too. It was Regal’s permanent memento to me of the days I’d spent in his dungeon.

I walked to the branch of candles on the table, and blew them all out save one. I felt Dutiful’s eyes follow me as I walked back to my pallet and sat down on it. It was low and hard, placed near the door where I could guard my good masters. I lay down on it.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

‘I’m going to sleep now.’ I made it the end of the conversation.

He snorted contemptuously. ‘A real servant would have begged my leave to extinguish the candles. And to go to sleep. Goodnight, Tom Badgerlock Farseer.’

‘Sleep well, most gracious prince.’

Another snort from him. Then silence, save for the rain thundering on the roof and splatting on the innyard mud. Silence, save for the soft crackling of the fire, and the distant music from the common room below. Silence but for unsteady footsteps making their way past our door. But most of all, the crashing silence in my heart where for so long Nighteyes’ awareness had been a steady beacon in my darkness, a warmth in my winter, a guide star in my night. My dreams were thin, illogical human things now that frayed at a moment’s waking. Tears flooded warm under my closed eyelids. I opened my mouth to breathe silently through my constricted throat and lay on my back.

I heard the Prince shift in his bedding, and shift again. Very quietly, he rose from his bed and went to the window. For a time he gazed out at the rain falling in the muddy innyard. ‘Does it go away?’ He asked the question in a very soft voice, but I knew it was for me.

I took a breath, forced steadiness into my voice. ‘No.’

‘Not ever?’

‘There may be another for you some day. But you never forget the first.’

He did not move from the windowsill. ‘How many bond-animals have you had?’

I nearly didn’t answer that. Then, ‘Three,’ I said.

He turned away from the night and looked at me through the darkness. ‘Will there be another one for you?’

‘I doubt it.’

He left the window and returned to his bed. I heard him pull up his blankets and settle into them. I thought he would go to sleep, but he spoke again. ‘Will you teach me the Wit also?’

Someone had better teach you something, if it’s only not to trust so quickly. ‘I haven’t said I’d teach you anything.’

He was silent for a time. He sounded almost sulky when he said, ‘Well, it were better if someone taught me something.’

A long silence followed and I hoped he had gone to sleep. The uncanny way his words echoed my thought unnerved me. Rain beat against the thick whorl of glass in the window, and dark flowed into the room. I closed my eyes and centred myself. As gingerly as if I handled broken glass, I reached towards him.

He was there, still and taut as a crouching cat. I sensed him waiting and watching for me, yet unaware I stood at the borders of his mind. His rough Skill-sense was an awkward, unhoned tool. I drew back a bit and studied him from all angles, as if he were a colt I was thinking of breaking. His wariness was a mix of apprehension and aggression. It was a weapon as much as a shield that he inexpertly wielded. Nor was it pure Skill. It is a hard thing to describe, but his Skill was like a white beacon edged with green darkness. His Wit awareness of me was what he used to focus. The Wit does not reach from a man’s mind to another man’s mind, but the Wit can make me aware of the animal that the man’s mind inhabits. So it was with Dutiful. Bereft of the cat as a focus, his Wit was a wide-flung web, seeking a kinship. As was mine, I suddenly realized.

I recoiled from that and found myself back in my own flesh. I set my walls against the untrained fumbling of his Skill. Yet even as I did so, there were two things I could not deny. The thread of Skill that connected me to Dutiful grew stronger each time I ventured along it. And I had no idea of how to sever it, let alone remove my Skill-command from his mind.

The third piece of knowledge was as bitter as the other parts were disturbing. I quested. I had no desire to form a bond with another animal. But without Nighteyes to contain it, my Wit sprawled out like seeking roots. Like water that overbrims a vessel and must seek a place to flow, the Wit went forth from me, silent yet reaching. Earlier I had seen need in the Prince’s eyes, a desperate longing for connection and belonging. Did I radiate that same privation? I closed my heart and willed myself to stillness. Time would heal my grief. I repeated that lie until sleep claimed me.

I awoke when the light spilling in the window touched my face. I opened my eyes but lay still. The pale light filling the room after the dark of the storm was like being immersed in clear water. I felt curiously empty, as one does when one has been ill for a long time and then begins to mend. I caught at the edges of a fleeing dream, but clutched only the edges of a shining morning, the sea below me and wind in my face. Sleep had left me, but I had no inclination to rise and face the day. I felt as if I were inside a bubble of safety, and that if I remained motionless, I could cling to this moment in peace. I lay on my side, my hand and arm under the flat pillow. After a time, I became aware of the feathers under my hand.

I lifted my head, intending to look at them, but the room swung suddenly about me as if I’d had too much to drink. The realities of the day to come – the long ride to Buckkeep, the meetings with Chade and Kettricken that would follow, the resumption of my life as Tom Badgerlock – crashed down on me. I sat up slowly.

The Prince slept on in his bed. I turned and found the Fool regarding me sleepily. He lay on his side in his bed, his chin propped on his fist. He looked weary, but insufferably pleased about something. The effect made him look years younger.

‘I didn’t expect to see you in your bed this morning,’ I greeted him, and then, ‘How did you get in? I latched that door last night.’

‘Did you? Interesting. But you can scarcely be more surprised to see me in my own bed than I am to see you in yours.’

I let that barb go past me. I scratched the bristle on my cheek. ‘I should shave,’ I said to myself, dreading the idea. I hadn’t touched a blade to my face since we’d left Galekeep.

‘Indeed you should. I’d like us to look as presentable as possible when we return to Buckkeep.’

I thought of my cat-shredded shirt, but nodded acquiescence. Then I recalled the feathers. ‘I’ve something I want to show you,’ I began, reaching under the pillow, but just then the Prince drew a deeper breath and opened his eyes.

‘Good morning, my prince,’ Lord Golden greeted him.

‘Morning,’ he acknowledged wearily. ‘Lord Golden, Tom Badgerlock.’ He looked and sounded marginally better than he had at the end of yesterday’s ride. His formality towards me was back in place. I felt relief.

‘Good morning, my prince,’ I greeted him.

And so the day began. We ate in our room. Our cleaned and mended clothing arrived shortly after our breakfasts. Lord Golden looked almost restored to his former glory, and the Prince looked tidy if not exactly royal. As I had suspected, washing had done little to make my clothing more presentable. I begged a needle and thread from the servant who brought our food, saying I wished to tighten the sleeve in my mended shirt. The reality was that I required a pocket in it. Lord Golden looked at me and sighed. ‘Keeping you decently clothed may become the most expensive part of keeping you as a servant, Tom Badgerlock. Well, see what you can do with the rest of yourself.’

I was the only one with any need to shave. Lord Golden commanded hot water and a razor and glass for me. He sat by the window, gazing out over the little landing town as I worked. I had scarcely begun my task when I became aware of the Prince’s scrutiny. For a time, I ignored his intense fascination. The second time I nicked myself, I suppressed a curse, but did demand, ‘What? Have you never seen a man shave himself before?’

He coloured slightly. ‘No.’ He looked away as he added, ‘I have spent little time in the company of men. Oh, I’ve dined with our nobles, and hawked with them, and taken my sword lessons with the other lads of good houses. But …’ He seemed at a loss suddenly.

Just as abruptly, Lord Golden arose from his window seat. ‘I’ve a mind to see a bit of this town before we depart it. I think I shall take a stroll about it. With my prince’s permission.’

‘Of course, Lord Golden. As you will.’

When he left, I expected the Prince to go with him. Instead, he lingered with me. He watched me finish shaving, and when I rinsed the last of the soap from my smarting face, he asked with intense curiosity, ‘It hurts, then?’

‘Stings a little. Only if you hurry, as I always seem to do, and cut myself in the process.’ My mourning-shortened hair stuck up in thickets. Starling would have cut it for me, I thought, and then damned the thought and plastered it down to my head with water.

‘It won’t stay. Once it dries, it will just stick up again,’ the Prince pointed out helpfully.

‘I know that. My prince.’

‘Do you hate me?’

He asked it so casually, it set me completely off-balance. I put aside the towel and met his earnest gaze. ‘No. I do not hate you.’

‘Because I would understand if you did. Because of your wolf and all.’

‘Nighteyes.’

‘Nighteyes.’ He said the name carefully. Then he looked aside from me suddenly. ‘I never knew my cat’s name.’ I knew tears threatened to choke him. I sat carefully still and silent, waiting for him. After a moment, he drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t hate you, either.’

‘That’s good to know,’ I admitted. Then I added, ‘The cat told me to kill her.’ Despite my effort, the words sounded defensive.

‘I know. I heard her.’ He sniffed a little, then tried to disguise it as a cough. ‘And she would have forced you to kill her. She was completely determined.’

‘I think I knew that,’ I replied ruefully, and touched the renewed bandages at my throat. The Prince actually smiled, and I found myself returning the smile.

He asked the next question quickly, as if it were important to ask, so important that he feared the answer. ‘Will you be staying?’

‘Staying?’

‘Will I see you around Buckkeep Castle?’ He sat down suddenly at the table across from me and met my eyes directly with Verity’s blunt stare. ‘Tom Badgerlock. Will you teach me?’

Chade, my old master, had asked me and I’d been able to say no. The Fool, my oldest friend, had asked me to return to Buckkeep, and I’d refused him. If the Queen herself had asked me, I could have said no. The best I could manage with this Farseer heir was, ‘I don’t know that much to teach. What your father taught me, he taught me in secret, and he seldom had time for lessons.’

He regarded me soberly. ‘Is there anyone who knows more of the Skill than you do?’

‘No, my prince.’ I did not add that I’d killed them all. I could not have said why I suddenly added his title. Only that something in his manner demanded it.

‘Then you are Skillmaster now. By default.’

‘No.’ That I could answer, my tongue moving as swiftly as my thoughts. I took a breath. ‘I’ll teach you,’ I said. ‘But it will be as your father taught me. When I can and what I can. And in secret.’

Without a word, he reached his hand across the table to me, to seal the agreement with a touching of hands. Two things happened as our hands met. ‘The Wit and the Skill,’ he stipulated. As the skin of my palm touched his, the leap of Skill-spark between us sang.

Please.

His plea was sloppily done, pushed by the Wit, not the Skill. ‘We’ll see,’ I said aloud. I was already regretting it. ‘You may change your mind. I’m neither a good teacher, nor a patient one.’

‘But you treat me like a man, not “the Prince”. As if your expectations of a man were higher than those for a prince.’

I didn’t reply. I looked at him, waiting. He spoke hesitantly, as if the answer shamed him. ‘To my mother, I am a son. But I am also, always, the Prince and Sacrifice for my people. And to all others, always, I am the Prince. Always. I am no one’s brother. I am no man’s son. I am not anyone’s best friend.’ He laughed, a small strangled laugh. ‘People treat me very well as “my prince.” But there is always a wall there. No one speaks to me as, well, as me.’ He shrugged one shoulder and his mouth twisted to one side wryly. ‘No one except you has ever told me I was stupid, even when I was most definitely being stupid.’

I understood suddenly why he had so swiftly succumbed to the Piebalds’ plot. To be loved, in a familiar, unfearing way. To be someone’s best friend, even if that someone was only a cat. I could recall a time when I thought Chade was the only one in the world who would give me that. I recalled how terrifying the threat of losing that had been. I knew that any boy, prince or beggar, needed that from a man. But I wasn’t sure I was a wise choice for that. Chade, why couldn’t he have chosen Chade? I was still formulating an answer to that when there was a knock at the door.

I opened it to discover Laurel. Reflexively, I looked past her for Lord Golden. He wasn’t there. She glanced over her own shoulder with a small frown, and then back to my face. ‘May I come in?’ she asked pointedly.

‘Of course, my lady. I just thought –’

She entered and I closed the door behind her. She considered Prince Dutiful for a moment, and something almost like relief dawned on her face as she made a courtesy to him. She smiled as she greeted him with ‘Good morning, my Prince.’

‘Good morning, Huntswoman.’ His reply was solemn, but he did reply. I glanced at the boy, and realized what she saw. The Prince had come back to himself. His face was solemn, his eyes shadowed, but he was with us. He no longer stared within himself to a distance no one else could see.

‘It is good to see you so well recovered, my prince. I came to enquire as to when you wished to depart for Buckkeep. The sun is climbing and the day looks fair, if cold.’

‘I am pleased to leave that decision to Lord Golden.’

‘An excellent decision, my prince.’ She glanced about the room and then asked, ‘Lord Golden is not here?’

‘He said he was going out,’ I replied.

My words startled her. It was almost as if a chair had spoken, and then I realized fully my error. In the presence of the Prince, a mere servant like myself would not presume to speak out. I glanced down at my feet so no one would see the chagrin in my eyes. Yet again, I resolved to focus more closely on the role I must play. Had I forgotten all of Chade’s earlier training?

She glanced at Dutiful, but when he added nothing to my words, she said slowly, ‘I see.’

‘You are, of course, welcome to wait here for his return, Huntswoman.’ His words said one thing, his tone another. I had not heard it done so well since Shrewd was king.

‘Thank you, my prince. But if I may, I think I will seek my own room until I am sent for.’

‘As you wish, Huntswoman.’ He had turned to look out the window.

‘Thank you, my prince.’ She dipped a courtesy to his back. Our eyes met for a fleeting moment as she went to the door, but I read nothing there. When the door had closed behind her, the Prince turned back to me.

‘There. Do you see what I mean, Tom Badgerlock?’

‘She was not unkind to you, my prince.’

He came back to the table and sat down. He made a motion to me to do the same. As I took a chair opposite him, he said, ‘She was not anything to me. She treats me as they all do. “As it please you, my prince.” But in all the Six Duchies, I haven’t a true friend.’

I took a breath then asked, ‘What of your companions? Your friends who ride and hunt with you?’

‘I have far too many of them. I must call each one a friend, and to none of them may I show favour, lest the father of another one feel slighted. And Eda forbid that I should smile at a young woman. At my slightest attempt to form a friendship, she is whisked away, lest my attention be interpreted as courtship. No.’ He came back to the table and dropped into a chair. ‘I am alone, Tom Badgerlock. Forever alone.’ He sighed heavily and looked down at his hands on the table’s edge. It was a bit too dramatic to befit the young man.

I spoke before I thought. ‘Oh, poor deprived lad.’ He lifted his head and glowered at me. I returned his look levelly. Then a slow smile came to his face. ‘Spoken like a true friend,’ he said.

A moment later Lord Golden came through the door. In a flicker of his long fingers, he showed me a bird’s message-tube. In the next instant, it had vanished up his sleeve. Of course. He’d gone to see Starling, to see if we’d received word back from Buckkeep. And we had. No doubt Chade would have all in readiness for our return. In the next moment, his eyes took in the Prince seated at the other end of the table. If he thought it odd to find the Farseer heir sitting at table with me, watching me mend the sleeve of my shirt, he did not show it.

Not even a flick of his eyes betrayed that he had greeted me first. Instead, all his attention seemed fixed on the Prince as he addressed him. ‘Good day, my prince. If it please you, we can ride as soon as we may.’

The Prince drew a long breath. ‘It would please me, Lord Golden.’

Now Lord Golden turned to me, and gave me a smile such as I had not seen on his face for days. ‘You have heard our prince, Tom Badgerlock. Stir yourself to readiness and pack our things. And you can leave off mending that, my good man, at least for now. Never can it be said that I am a niggardly master, even to such a wretched servant as yourself. Put this on, lest you shame us all riding back into Buckkeep.’ He tossed me a bundled packet. It proved to be a shirt of homespun, far sturdier than the tattered garment in my hands. So much for a pocket up my sleeve today.

‘My thanks to you, Lord Golden,’ I replied with humble gratitude. ‘I shall strive to take better care of this one than I did of the last three.’

‘See that you do. Put it on, and then haste to Mistress Laurel, to let her know we’ll be riding soon. And on your way down to the stables to ask that the horses be readied, stop at the kitchens and request that they pack us a luncheon as well. A couple of cold birds and a meat pie, two bottles of wine, and some of the fresh bread I smelled baking as I entered.’

‘As it please you, master,’ I replied.

As I was pulling the new shirt on over my head, I heard the Prince ask sourly, ‘My Lord Golden, is it you who thinks I am an idiot, that you put on this show for me? Or is it the wish of Tom Badgerlock?’

I popped my head out hastily, not wishing to miss the look on Lord Golden’s face. But it was the Fool who greeted me. His grin was nothing short of dazzling, as he swept a wide minstrel’s bow to Dutiful, his non-existent hat brushing his knees. As he straightened, he gave me a look of triumph. It baffled me, but I found myself answering his grin with one of my own as he replied, ‘Good prince, it is neither my wish nor that of Tom Badgerlock, but of Lord Chade. He desires that we practise as much as we may, for poor actors such as ourselves need many rehearsals if we are to fool even an eye or two.’

‘Lord Chade. I should have known you both belonged to him.’ It pleased me that he did not betray I had already told him that. He was learning some discretion at least. He gave the Fool a piercing look, one with much mistrust in it. The look shifted sideways to include me. ‘But who are you?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘Who are you, the both of you?’

Without thinking, the Fool and I exchanged a look. That we conferred before we answered incensed the Prince. I could tell by the slow spots of colour that rose in his cheeks. Beyond the anger, hidden in the back of his eyes, was the boy’s fear that he had made a fool of himself to me. Had his trust been won by a contrived performance? Did the affection between the Fool and me preclude any friendship I would share with him? I saw his candour begin to close; I could see him retreating behind his regal wall. I reached hastily across the table, and violated every noble protocol that existed by seizing his hand. I let honesty flow through that touch, convincing him with Skill just as Verity had once won his mother’s trust.

‘He is a friend, my prince. The best friend I have ever had, and like to be yours as well.’ My gaze did not leave the Prince’s face as I reached my free hand towards the Fool. I heard him step up beside Dutiful. An instant later, I felt him set his ungloved fingers in mine. I brought his hand to join our clasp, his long fingers closing around both our hands.

‘If you will have me,’ the Fool offered humbly. ‘I will serve you as I served your father, and your grandfather before him.’