Fool's Quest - Страница 86

His words halted. He clasped his hands together tightly, and I watched him try to find calmness. Motley left off grooming herself and hopped closer to him. “Fool? Fool?”

“I’m here, Motley,” he said as if she were his child. He extended his hand toward the sound of her voice. She hopped to his wrist and he did not flinch. She climbed up his sleeve, beak over claw, until she reached his shoulder. She began to preen his hair. I saw his clenched jaw relax. Still, his voice was flat and dead as he spoke. “Fitz. Do you understand that is what they intend for Bee? For our child? She is a valuable addition to their breeding stock, a strain of White blood they have not yet been able to add. If they have not already deduced she is mine, they soon will.”

Ash’s eyes flew wide open. He started to speak. A sharp gesture from me stopped him. I moved my hand to my heart and tried to calm it. I drew a deep breath. Ask the questions. “So. How long will this journey to Clerres take us?”

“In truth, I can’t say with surety. When first I traveled from the school to Buckkeep, it was by a very roundabout route. I was young. More than once I lost my way, or had to take ship to a port other than the one I desired in the hope of finding a ship there that would take me closer to Buck. Sometimes I was months in one location before I had the wherewithal to travel on. Twice I was held against my wishes. Back then, my resources were very limited, and the Six Duchies little more than a legend to me. And when I returned to Clerres with Prilkop, we traveled part of the way by the stones. It still took us quite a time to get there.” He paused. Was he hoping that I would offer to take him by that route again? If so, he would wait for a long time, even when my control of the Skill was restored. Chade’s current state had only increased my reluctance ever to enter them again.

“But however we go, we had best start as soon as we are able. The dragon’s blood Ash gave me has had a remarkable effect on my health. If I continue to improve, if you can help me regain my eyesight … Oh, even if neither happens. We will wait for the messenger you hope for. But how long? Ten days?”

There was no reasoning with him. I would not give him false promises. “Let us wait until the Rousters return with Thick and FitzVigilant. It will not be many days. And perhaps by then your eyes will have improved as much as the rest of you. And if not, we will ask Thick and the rest of Nettle’s coterie to see if they can restore your vision.”

“Not you?”

“Until Nettle judges my Skill to be controlled again, no. I will be in the room but I will not be able to help.” I repeated aloud the promise I’d made to myself. “It’s time for me to cede to her true authority as Skillmistress. And respect her knowledge. She has warned me not to Skill. So I will not. But the others can help you.”

“But I … No, then. No.” He suddenly lifted one scarred hand to cover his mouth. Both his fingers and his voice shook as he spoke. “I cannot. I just can’t let them … Not until you are recovered. Fitz. You know me. But those others … They could lend you their strength but you must be the one to touch me. Until then … No. I will have to wait.” He snapped his mouth shut suddenly and abruptly crossed his arms on his chest. I could almost see hope depart from his body as his shoulders rounded in. He closed his blind eyes and I looked away from him, trying to give him space to compose himself. So quickly he had lost his dragon-blood courage. I almost wished he were quarreling with me still. To see him suddenly shaking in fear again was like a bellows blowing on the coals of my anger. I would kill them. All of them.

Motley muttered to him. I stood and walked away from the table. I did not speak again until he could hear that I was not sitting and staring at him.

“Ash. You have a deft hand with those scissors. Do you think you could take the stitches out of my brow? They are too tight.”

“They look like a puckered seam in a badly made dress,” Ash told me. “Come. Sit down here near the fire where the light is better.”

Ash and I talked while he worked, mostly his small warnings that he would now tug out a stitch or requests that I blot away the blood welling where the threads had been. We both pretended not to notice when the Fool gently set his crow down on the table and carefully groped his way to his bed. By the time Ash was finished with me, he was either truly asleep or feigning it well.

The slow days ground by. Whenever I found myself pacing, I took myself down to the practice yards. I had one chance encounter with Blade’s grandson. He barely concealed his satisfaction at the drubbing he gave me. The second time I accepted his invitation to try our skills with staves against each other, he very nearly laid me out. Afterward, Foxglove drew me aside and asked me sarcastically if I enjoyed the beatings I was taking. I told her that of course I didn’t, I was simply trying to regain some of my old physical skills. But as I limped away to the steams, I knew I had lied. My guilt demanded pain, and pain was one of the few things that could drive Bee’s predicament from my thoughts. I knew it for an unhealthy tendency, but excused myself on the grounds that when finally I had a chance to use a blade against her kidnappers, I might have regained some of my ability.

So it was that I was in the practice yards when the shout went up that the Rousters had returned. I touched the tip of my wooden blade to the earth to signify my surrender to my partner and went to meet them. Their formation was ragged and they rode as defeated and angry men do. They had their comrades’ horses, but were bearing no bodies home. Most likely they had burned them where they fell. I wondered what they had made of finding one man hamstrung, with his throat cut. Perhaps in all the blood, no one would have noticed his specific injuries.

They ignored me as they led their horses to the stables. FitzVigilant had already dismounted and stood holding the reins of his mount, waiting for someone to take the horse. Thick, looking old and weary and cold, sat slumped on his sturdy beast. I went to his stirrup. “Come down, old friend. Put your hand on my shoulder.”

He lifted his face to regard me. I had not seen him look so miserable in a very long time. “They’re mean. They made fun of me all the way home. They bumped me from behind when I was trying to drink my tea and I spilled it all down my front. And at the inn, they sent two girls to tease me. They dared me to touch their breasts and then slapped me when I did.” Tears came into his little eyes.

He told me his troubles so earnestly. I pushed down my wrath to speak gently to him. “You are home and no one will hurt you anymore,” I promised him. “You are back with your friends. Come down.”

“I did my best to protect him,” Lant said behind my shoulder. “But he could not seem to stay clear of his tormentors, or ignore them.”

Having had the care of Thick more than once, I understood well enough. The little man did seem to have the knack for putting himself into the most trouble he could find: Despite his years, he still had difficulty telling mockery from good-natured joking. Until it was too late. And like a cat, he was inevitably most attracted to those who had the least tolerance for him. Those most likely to torment him.

But once he had been able to evade actual physical damage.

I spoke very softly. “Could not you Skill them, Don’t see me, don’t see me?”

He scowled. “They tricked me. One would say, ‘Oh, I like you, be my friend.’ But they would be mean. Those girls, they said they would like me to touch them. That it would be fun. Then they slapped me.”

I winced for the hurt in his eyes and drooping mouth. He coughed, and it was a wet cough. Not good.

“Every one of them deserves a good thrashing, is what I think. Sir.” I turned to find Perseverance approaching. He led three horses. The roan, Priss, and a dappled gelding from my stables. Speckle. That was his name.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded and then took in the boy’s appearance. His right eye was blacked and that cheek well bruised. I recognized that someone had backhanded him. I knew that type of injury well. “And what happened to you?” I demanded before he could answer my first question.

“They hit Per, too,” Thick volunteered.

Lant looked flustered. “He tried to intervene that night at the inn. I told him it would only make things worse and it did.”

I was confronted by incompetence, inexperience, and stupidity. Then I looked at Thick’s woeful face and mentally changed stupidity to naïveté. Thick had never outgrown his innocence. I was silent as I helped him dismount. Thick coughed again and could not seem to stop. “Lant will take you to the kitchens and see that you get a hot, sweet drink. Per and I will take the horses. Then, Lant, I suggest you present yourself to King Dutiful to give your report. Thick will give his at the same time.”

Lant looked alarmed. “Not Lord Chade?”

“He’s very ill right now.” Thick was still coughing. He finally caught a wheezing breath. I relented a little. “Be sure Thick eats well and then take him through the steams. Then I will hear your report at the same time as the king does.”

“Badgerlock, I rather think …”

“Prince FitzChivalry,” I corrected him. I looked him up and down. “And do not make that mistake again.”

“Prince FitzChivalry,” he said, accepting the correction. He opened his mouth and then shut it again.