Fool's Quest - Страница 134

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Jealousy? I felt no jealousy of that pup! But it was easier not to dispute that with Chade. I did not want to take Lant and I knew I could not take him, but I didn’t say no to Chade. For this moment, he was my old mentor as he had always been. I wanted no quarrel with him, not when I feared it might be my last conversation with him. I shifted our focus. “Have you been feigning illness all this time?”

“No. Only sometimes. It suits me to seem weak. Fitz, I don’t trust Rosemary. She has convinced Dutiful that he does not need assassins such as you and me. She’s been letting all my nets unravel. All my informants have gone unpaid, and unable to report to me. Everything I built, all those years. It’s falling apart.”

“Chade, I still have to go. I cannot stay here and take up your webs.”

“Heh!” He laughed and I looked up to see him smiling fondly at me. “As if you could. As if anyone could. No, Fitz. I’m failing and I know it. And no one will come after me. The time for such as me is past. No, I do not ask that you stay and take up my work. Go and do what you must.”

“Chade. Why do you pretend to be feeble, with a wandering mind?”

He laughed again. “Oh, Fitz. Because I am. Not every day and every hour. Sometimes I feel I am as sharp as ever. And then I cannot find my slippers, and I look and look, to find they were on my feet all that time.” He shook his head at himself. “Better that people think I am wandering all the time than know the truth. I don’t want Rosemary to see me as a threat to her assumption of power.”

I was incredulous. “Do you fear her?”

“Stop. I can already hear you thinking of how you will kill her for me. A slow poison, a fall down the steps. No one the wiser and the old man kept safe.”

He was right. It made me smile, and then I tried to feel ashamed of that. I couldn’t. He was right about me.

“So let her have it, my den and my bed, my tools and even my writings. She won’t find the key ones. No one will. Except perhaps you. When you come back.” He took a deep breath and sighed it out again. “I have another task now. Shine. There is so much time to make up for. They thought to punish me by killing her or marrying her off to some cloddish brute, but what they did was worse. She is vapid, Fitz. And vain. Ignorant. But she need not be. There is a bright mind there, turned to all the wrong things. Kettricken teaches her now and I do not despise what she teaches my daughter. But for all her years, Kettricken is still naïve in some ways. She still believes that honesty and good will triumph in the end. So I must be here, for my Shine, to teach her that a little knife in her boot or a well-planned bolt-hole may be the key to a long life.

“And I want to be here to watch her bloom. They were all so astonished when I unlocked her Skill. They came on the run, they did, and helped her put up her walls and blocked her in until she can learn to master it. But she’s going to be strong, Fitz. Strong. If ever they doubted the Farseer blood ran true in me, my daughter will disprove them.”

So strange, to hear him admit that old doubt. “You are as much Farseer as I am,” I assured him.

He rumpled my hair again. “I’ve a gift for you,” he said quietly. “I sent for it some time ago. It’s from Jamaillia, by way of Bingtown, where they enlarged and corrected it. You should take it with you. It’s in the scroll case on top of the shelf in my bedroom. The case is dyed blue. It’s for you. Go get it now.”

I rose and went to his bedchamber. I found the scroll case and brought it back to him. He took it from me and directed me, “Find a chair and pull it up here.”

And by the time I had done that, he had opened the case and pulled out the rolled-up map. For such it was. The leather had been scraped thin, and it uncoiled to twice the size I had expected it to be. It was done on calfskin, and inked all in gleaming colors. The lettering was wondrous tiny but still clear to read. There were the Six Duchies, and the Mountain Kingdom. Chalced, and the Rain Wilds. And beyond them, the Cursed Shores, with Bingtown, and then on, to far Jamaillia, with the Pirate Isles. And beyond them, the Spice Isles. “It’s beautiful, Chade. But it’s so different from every other map of Chalced or the Rain Wilds or—”

“Much more accurate,” he said brusquely. “With increased traffic through that region, we now have far better charts and maps. Verity drew his maps based on what he knew himself, and the resources of the time. There were no freely available charts of the Rain Wild River, and those he bought were the work of charlatans intent only on gaining coin. The same is true for the interior of Chalced. And of course Bingtown and those regions. Charts of the Cursed Shores are notoriously bad because of the storms that change the shorelines and river mouths almost every season. But there it is. The best map that Six Duchies gold could buy. I intended to keep it, but I’m giving it to you. Along with this.”

His flick of his wrist was not as limber as it once had been. I was still impressed when a bone tube slid into his hand. He unscrewed a finely tooled stopper and shook out a small roll of paper so thin it was almost translucent. “This is my work,” he said, holding it coiled in his hand. “The work I saw fit to do, knowing the danger but deeming it necessary. Aslevjal will not stand forever. As the ice caverns have warmed and the water has run, the old halls are leaking. Green slime and moss have begun to venture through the passages. Mold grows on the map they left there.”

He proffered the rolled paper to me. I opened it carefully. My silence was awe. “Every detail,” I finally said aloud in slow amazement.

He chuckled his delight at my realization of what he had handed me. “Every Skill-portal is marked. The engraving on the Elderling map there was fading, but I copied all I could see, Fitz. It will tell you what was graven on each face of every pillar. The destinations available to you. I intended to transfer it all to my new map, but my vision is fading. And I no longer feel inclined to share my hard-won secrets with those who do not appreciate the risks I ran to get them. If they wish to think me a foolish and reckless old man, then let them.”

“Oh, Chade. This is—” His flapping hand interrupted my gratitude. He had never been good at accepting thanks.

“You take it, my boy. Finish my work.”

He went suddenly into a coughing fit and gestured wildly for water, but when I brought it to him he coughed so badly he could not drink it at first. Once he could, he seemed to choke on it, and then finally to gasp in a free breath. “I’m fine,” he wheezed. “Don’t delay here. Take it and go before Shine comes back. Curious as a cat is that one! Be away now. If she sees you carry anything out of here, she will natter me with questions until I cannot think. Go, Fitz. But bid me farewell before you leave. And come to me first when you return.”

“I will.” And moved by what impulse I do not know, I stooped and kissed his brow.

He hooked his bony hand around the back of my head and for a moment held me close. “Oh, my boy. The best mistake Chivalry ever made was you. Go on now.”

And I did. I carried the map case under my arm, but the bone cylinder had gone up my sleeve as soon as Chade had said it was mine. Back in my fine new chamber, I found the fire burning brightly, my bed spread smoothly, and my other boots polished to a sheen by the wardrobe. Someone had placed a decanter of amber brandy on my mantelpiece with two fine little glasses beside it. Servants gave one very little privacy. It took some thinking to come up with two different hiding places that might withstand scrutiny and tidying. I stitched a loop to the back of a tapestry and secured Chade’s pillar-map there. The other map case was larger, but I found a spot atop the trim that held up the bed curtains. It was reassuringly dusty and I hoped it would remain so.

That done, I sat down by myself for the first time since I’d returned from Withywoods. I toed off my boots and peeled the damp stockings from my feet. I sat and felt the heat of the fire penetrate my body. The brandy proved to be of an excellent quality and I reflected wearily that drinking it on an empty stomach was not my best idea today.

Fitz. Da? I’ve heard you are back at Buckkeep Castle. Both Dutiful and I are very anxious to sit down with you. Will you join us in my sitting room, please?

Of course. When?

Now, please. Dutiful had rather expected you would come to see him as soon as you’d returned.

Of course. I should have. I was concerned for the Fool.

And Chade, too.

I found him better than I expected, I admitted, and wondered a bit woefully how she knew so clearly of all my movements since I had returned.

He has good days, and some that are not so good. Will you come now, please? The king has taken this time for us from a very busy schedule.

Immediately.

Dry socks. I started to pull on the cleaned boots and then looked at myself. Rumpled shirt. Weather-stained trousers. I opened the wardrobe and found an array of new shirts, variously afflicted with buttons. I’d never owned so many clothes in my life and I wondered who was arranging these for me. Ash? Nettle? Some poor servant in charge of dressing bastards elevated to noble status?

They fit me well enough, though there was room for more paunch than was flattering. I’d chosen a blue shirt and I paired it with dark trousers. I added the vest that had been hung with the shirt. There was a ribbony thing with it that I didn’t know how to wear. I hoped it wasn’t important. The vest was long, hanging almost to my knees.

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