Fool's Quest - Страница 112

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I did my best to be civil as the commander of the keep greeted me. Commander Spurman invited Kesir Riddle and me to join him for a late repast. They put us in the best lodging the keep had, and urged us to take advantage of the steams. I had no heart for cleanliness, but forced myself through the ritual. We shared the steams with a dozen or more guardsmen, still drunk on blood and battle. My efforts to remain unnoticed were useless, and I had to accept congratulations from them.

When we entered the dining hall, I found not only Spurman but also a handful of his officers, Foxglove, Lant, and several others convened. I had expected a small and simple meal, but Spurman had ordered up the best his keep could offer. For a moment, I was baffled. Then I recalled that I was a prince. Carris seed. My head felt full of wool. Time to tighten my thoughts and be very careful.

I do not know how I survived that meal. I decided it was better to be seen as taciturn than as a man who made unrelated comments. When the meal was over, I hoped to retreat to my bed, but killing Chalcedeans within Buck was an activity that seemed to require a thorough discussion. Over and over Spurman and his officers marveled at the Chalcedeans’ audacity and wondered who their peculiar allies had been and what they had hoped to achieve. Riddle, Lant, and Foxglove all expressed puzzlement, and I maintained my noble silence. When the talk ran down, the keep’s Skill-user found a moment to draw Riddle and me aside. “A private word before you retire, gentlemen, if you are not too weary?”

I was so tired my ears were humming, but as we bade everyone good night and left the gathering, she managed to catch up with us. Out of earshot of the others, she still looked embarrassed as she told us, “I am to inform you, in the strongest possible terms, that you are to return to Buckkeep Castle as soon as you are able.”

Riddle and I exchanged a glance. “Was the message from Skillmistress Nettle or King Dutiful?”

“Yes. She relayed the king’s will in this.”

I thanked the Skill-user, and both Riddle and I moved slowly toward our rooms. At a bend in the corridor, I asked him, “How angry is Nettle, do you think?”

“Very,” he said shortly. And in that terse response, I sensed that he wished to keep that aspect of our fiasco private. For a time I was silent. Nettle was pregnant and should have had a time of peace and happiness as she waited for her child. I had driven a wedge between her and Riddle. I tried to tell myself that it was outside my control, that her sister being stolen had destroyed peace and happiness for all of us. Yet I could not quite convince myself.

I walked more slowly. “Before we go back to Buck, I want to see the ship they came on.”

He shook his head. “It’s not tied up in Salter’s Deep anymore. It was confiscated days ago. Spurman told me that they removed the ship as part of the ambush. The crew claimed to know nothing except that they’d been hired and paid very well to simply stay aboard and wait for their passengers to come back. They came out of the Pirate Isles, and were hired new to the ship and one another. Most of them seemed glad to walk away from it.”

“No chart on board with Clerres marked on it?” I was half-jesting, but Riddle took me seriously.

“Nothing. Literally nothing. No extra clothing left aboard, not a trinket or a shoestring. Only the crew and their bits of possessions. Nothing to indicate there had even been passengers.”

Despair gaped like a dry well in front of me. I could not indulge in that. I could not curse nor weep. Such things prevent a man from thinking, and I needed to think clearly. I reached the door of my room and opened it. Riddle followed me in.

“So. We return to Buckkeep Castle tomorrow,” he told me.

“So I planned.”

“We are ordered back, Fitz. That’s a bit different.”

“Oh.” It took a moment for me to consider all the ramifications of that. Prince FitzChivalry, so recently acknowledged and lauded, was being summoned back to Buckkeep like a recalcitrant page. This was not going to be pleasant for anyone. I grasped abruptly how much of my personal freedom had vanished when Chade had taken my arm and presented me to the court. What had seemed a family matter, my sidestepping my cousin’s request that I not go off on my own, now loomed as a prince directly disobeying his king’s directive. Dutiful had reminded me he was my king, and I’d admitted that to him. And then done as I thought best, as if I were merely Tom Badgerlock. No. Not even Tom Badgerlock should have defied his king that way. I chewed my lower lip.

Riddle sank down to sit on the edge of my bed. “I see that you understand.”

I walked to the window and stared out at the lights of Salter’s Deep. “I wish you hadn’t been dragged into it.”

“Oh, Fitz, I dragged myself into it. I could have just reported that I suspected you were going alone, and the Buckkeep Guard would have brought you back.”

I turned to stare at him. “Truly?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. They might have just told me to drag you back quietly. A task that neither of us would have relished.” He gave a small sigh. “No, I got myself into this.”

“Sorry to have put you in that position.” Loyalty to me or to Nettle, and he’d chosen me. That did not bode well for any of us.

And me? I’d chosen my duty as a father over my duty as a prince to a king. As I knew I would again. As I must.

Bee, where are you? My heart cried out for her, and shame wafted over me. Why couldn’t I find and save my child? We’d come so close. I’d seen where she had slept, just days ago.

Riddle’s voice jolted me. “Fitz. This is a terrible question but it must be asked. At what point do we accept that Bee and Shine are lost to us?”

I turned wild eyes upon him. “Don’t even say that!”

“I have to say it. Someone has to ask it. You know as well as I do that they may both be already dead, out in the forest. We have no trail left to follow. The Servants and the Chalcedeans are all dead or fled.” He came to join me at the window. “We’ve no clues left to follow. The best we can hope now is that they turn up on their own at a farmstead or inn.”

“And the worst that can happen is that things remain as they are now. With us having no idea whatever became of them.”

For a time, we both stood in silence. I tried to find a thread of hope. “We did not find Vindeliar or Dwalia,” I reminded him.

“They may be bodies in the forest. Or hiding from us as they did before. They have not left us a trail we can follow.”

He was right. Reality and the bleakness of elfbark welled up in me like blood in Ellik’s wound. “I’m so powerless.” The words burst from me. “Riddle, I had to come here and try to find her. Since Winterfest, she has been gone and I’ve been able to do nothing. Nothing! And now I’ve even less of a trail to follow.” Agony and anger were one force in me. I wanted to smash everything in the room but most of all, I wanted to destroy myself for how impotent I was. I had cut my hair to my scalp when Molly died, a symbolic destruction and punishment of myself because I had failed to save her. Now I wanted to slash my face, to batter my skull against the wall, to fling myself from the window. I hated myself for my total failure. I was a thing that was so useless as to be evil. I was an assassin and capable of torture, a man bereft of goodness. But even my wickedness was impotent. It had gained me nothing.

“I do not like the expression on your face,” Riddle said softly. “Fitz, you cannot hold yourself responsible. This was a thing that happened to you, not a thing you did.” His voice was sympathetic.

“It was a thing I did not do. A neglected duty,” I said quietly. I turned back to the window and looked down. A drop but not a big enough one. The impulse would not work.

Riddle knew me too well. “And then if we did find her, that would be the first piece of news she’d have about you.”

Slowly I turned away from the easy exit. “Tomorrow we leave for Buckkeep.”

Riddle nodded slowly.

Mornings come, whether we want them or not. I dragged my body from my bed and trusted that my herb-addled mind would catch up with me. Breakfast was interminable and full of pleasant conversations I could scarcely follow. Someone had recognized Ellik as Chancellor Ellik of Chalced, and for some reason it was very exciting that a Buck stable boy had made an end of the old man. Spurman assured me twice that he’d sent word on to Buckkeep Castle concerning exactly who had attempted this peculiar invasion of Buck. My weary mind offered me no response for him, so I simply nodded.

And finally, finally, we departed Ringhill Keep. I rode at the front of my guard, with Riddle beside me. Perseverance trailed behind us, still leading Bee’s horse, Priss. He looked battered and wan. Lant rode beside him. Riddle leaned over and said quietly that the boy had had his first night drinking with men the evening before, and been feted as a hero for his “first kill.” He tipped his head toward Lant. “Lucky for the lad, Lant intervened right after he puked the first time. He forbade any more liquor and sent him off to bed. But I expect he has a bit of a head today.”

I rode Fleeter. The horse seemed to have recovered from my abuse of her, but exhibited a wariness in contrast with her former eagerness to please me. I let her feel that I regretted how roughly I had used her, but did not try to intrude into her thoughts.

Foxglove came behind us at the head of our troops. She was displeased with the Rousters and cool toward me. I could tell that her efforts to integrate them with my guard were not going smoothly. Yesterday her control of them had been tenuous at best. Today as they formed up with my guard, they still remained as a separate rank at the rear of the formation. I suspected that she was unhappy with me for saddling her with such troublemakers. We had not ridden far before Lant edged his mount closer to mine. He spoke while looking straight ahead. “You humiliated me. You left me drugged and sleeping as if I were a child.”

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