Fool's Quest - Страница 4

My crawl through the wardrobe was as ungainly as it had been the night before, and I found myself wondering if all Chade’s secrecy was truly needed. I knew the Fool had asked for these rooms because he still feared pursuit, but I trusted that our passage through the stones would thwart anyone who had been following him. Then I recalled how the White girl had died, with parasites eating her eyes, and decided that caution was ever the better path. Keeping the Fool well hidden could do no harm.

One of Chade’s secretive minions had visited those chambers while I was gone. I needed to meet him. Or her. The Fool’s filthy garments had been taken and the tub had been emptied and pushed into the corner. Last night’s dishes and glasses had been tidied away. A heavy stoneware pot was lidded deep in the hearth, but the smell of braised beef had still escaped to flavor the room. A cloth had been spread on the table, and a loaf wrapped in a clean yellow napkin reposed next to a small dish of pale winter butter. There was a dusty bottle of red wine and a couple of cups, alongside plates and cutlery.

Kettricken was probably responsible for the two sensible linen nightgowns draped over the chair. Two pairs of loose trousers in the same weave were with them. Lamb’s-wool bed stockings were neatly rolled into balls. I smiled, considering it quite possible that the former queen had raided her own wardrobe for these soft things. I gathered the clothing and set it on the foot of the Fool’s bed.

The garments left on the second chair were more puzzling. A sky-blue dress, with dagged sleeves and dozens more buttons than were required to close any garment, was on the chair back. On the seat of the chair, almost-sensible trousers of black wool terminated in cuffs of blue-and-white stripes. The slippers beside them resembled a pair of small boats, with pointed, upturned toes and a thick heel. I thought they were too large for the Fool even if he had been well enough to walk around Buckkeep.

I had been aware of his deep and steady breathing since I entered the chamber. It was good that he still slept, and I suppressed my boyish impulse to wake him and ask him how he felt. Instead, I found paper and sat down at Chade’s old worktable to compose my note to Bee. I was full of words, managed a greeting, and then stared at the paper for a time. There was so much I needed to say, from reassurances that I would quickly return to advice for dealing with FitzVigilant and Shun. Could I be certain that hers would be the only eyes to read what I wrote? I hoped so, and yet my old training came to the fore and I decided not to commit to paper any words that could create ill feeling toward her. So I wrote only that I hoped she would enjoy these small things. As I had long promised, there was a knife for her belt, which I trusted she would use wisely. I reminded her that I would return home as soon as I could, and that I hoped she would use her time well while I was gone. I did not command her to study hard with her new tutor. In truth, I rather hoped that between my absence and the winter holiday, they would set lessons aside for a time. But I did not commit that thought to paper, either. Instead I closed my message by hoping that she had enjoyed Winterfest and noting that I missed her terribly. Then I sat for a time promising myself that at least Revel would be sure that there was some festivity for the holiday. I had intended to find some minstrels that fated day in Oaksbywater. Cook Nutmeg had proposed a menu that Revel had embellished. It was somewhere on my desk at home.

I had to do better by my daughter, and so I would. But there was little I could do about it until I returned home. The gifts would have to suffice until I could be there for Bee.

I spindled my note and tied it with some of Chade’s twine. I found his sealing wax, melted a bit onto the knot, and imprinted the blob with my signet ring. No charging buck for FitzChivalry Farseer, only the badger’s footprint that belonged to Holder Tom Badgerlock. I stood and stretched. I’d need to find a courier.

My Wit prickled. My nostrils flared, trying to find a scent. I did not move, but I let my gaze rove about the room. There. Behind a heavy tapestry of hounds pursuing a deer that concealed one of the secret entryways to the chamber, someone breathed. I centered myself in my body. My own breathing was silent. I did not reach for a weapon but I shifted my weight so that I could stand, move, leap, or drop to the floor in an instant. I waited.

“Don’t attack me, sir, please.” A boy’s voice. The words had a country lad’s drawn-out vowels.

“Come in.” I made no promises.

He hesitated. Then, very slowly, he pushed the tapestry to one side and stepped out into the dim light of the chamber. He showed me his hands, the right one empty, the left holding a scroll. “A message for you, sir. That’s all.”

I assessed him carefully. Young, perhaps twelve. His body had not yet turned the corner to manhood. Bony, with narrow shoulders. He’d never be a large man. He wore the Buckkeep blue of a page. His hair was brown and as curly as a water dog’s, and his eyes were brown as well. And he was cautious. He’d shown himself but not stepped far into the room. He had sensed danger and announced himself to me, which raised him in my estimation.

“A message from whom?” I asked.

The tip of his tongue wet his lips. “A man who knew to send it to you here. A man who taught me the way to come here.”

“How do you know I’m the one it’s for?”

“He said you’d be here.”

“But anyone might be here.”

He shook his head but didn’t argue with me. “Nose broken a long time ago and old blood on your shirt.”

“Bring it to me, then.”

He came like a fox thinking of stealing a dead rabbit from a snare; he walked lightly and did not take his eyes from me. When he reached the table’s edge, he set the scroll down and stepped back.

“Is that all?” I asked him.

He glanced around the room, at the firewood and the food. “And whatever else you might wish me to fetch for you, sir.”

“And your name is …?”

Again he hesitated. “Ash, sir.” He waited, watching me.

“There’s nothing else I need, Ash. You may go.”

“Sir,” he replied. He stepped back, not turning nor taking his eyes from me. One slow step after another, he retreated until his hands touched the tapestry. Then he whisked himself behind it. I waited, but did not hear the scuff of his steps on the stairs.

After a moment, I rose silently and ghosted toward the tapestry. But when I snatched it back, empty air met my gaze. He was gone as if he’d never been there. I permitted myself a nod. On his third try, Chade seemed to have found himself a worthy apprentice. I wondered how much of the training he did, or if Lady Rosemary taught the boy, and where they had found him … and then I set it firmly out of my thoughts. None of my business. And if I were wise, I’d ask few questions and become as little involved in the current state of assassinations and politics at Buckkeep as I could. My life was complicated enough already.

I was hungry, but thought I’d wait a bit longer to see if the Fool would wake and eat with me. I went back to the worktable and drew Chade’s scroll toward me. Within the first two lines, I felt the webs of Buckkeep intrigue tightening around me again. “As you are here, with little to do other than wait for his health to improve, perhaps you are willing to make yourself useful? Clothing has been provided, and the expectation has been planted that the court will be visited by Lord Feldspar of Spiretop, a small but well-established holding in the far northwest corner of Buck. Lord Feldspar is as stony as his name, fond of drink, and there is a rumor that a copper mine on his holding has recently begun to produce very fine-grade ore. Thus he has come to Buckkeep to be a party to the current trade negotiations.”

There was more. I was never once addressed by name, the handwriting was not recognizably Chade’s, but, oh, the game clearly was. I finished reading the scroll and went to consider the outlandish dress that had been left for me. I sighed. I had some time yet before I would be expected to join them for an evening meal and conversation in the Great Hall. I knew my role. Talk little, listen a great deal, and report back to Chade all details as to who sought to make me an offer and how rich the offer was. I could not imagine what the greater game was. I knew that Chade would have decided what I needed to know and given me exactly that much. Weaving his webs as he ever did.

And yet despite my annoyance, I felt a stirring of the old excitement as well. It was Winterfest eve. The castle kitchen would have outdone itself, there would be music and dancing and folk from all over the Six Duchies. With my new identity and in clothes that would both draw attention to me and mark me as a stranger, I would once more spy for Chade as I had when I was a youth.

I held the dress up against me. No. Not a dress, a fussy and foppish long jacket, to go with the impractical shoes. The buttons were dyed bone, carved into little blue posies, and they were not just on the front but on the long cuffs as well. Lots of buttons. Buttons that did no buttoning but were mere ornamentation. The fabric was soft, a kind I had not seen before, and when I held the garment by the shoulders it proved far heavier than I had expected. I frowned, then quickly realized that the secret pockets had already been loaded for me.

I found a very nice set of small burglary picks and a tiny fine-tooth saw blade. In another pocket was an extremely sharp blade of the sort favored by cutpurses. I doubted I was deft enough to ply that trade. The few times I’d done it for Chade, it had been not for the coins but to see what love-notes were in Regal’s purse, or which servant seemed to possess far more wages than an honest servingman would carry. Years ago. So many years ago.