Fool's Errand

Page 234

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 badtempered 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 skeptical laugh. “You're too rude. You don't care if I like you; you don't try to win my confidence or my favor. 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 halfsmile. “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 animal I had ever bonded to, I had attached myself to him. I had feared the Stablemaster and 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 counseled myself that Dutiful's turning to me prob' ably 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 'Councillor 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 jst, have begged my leave to extinguish the candles. And to go to sleep. Good night, 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.