“Don't you want to see the Outislander ship, Thick? Everyone else has gone on board to look around. I've heard it is very different from our ship. Let's go and see it.”
He looked at me for a moment in silence. “No,” he said. His little eyes were beginning to narrow in suspicion.
Further deception was useless. “Thick, we have to go on board. It's going to sail soon, to take the Prince to the Narcheska's home. We have to go with him.”
Around us, activity on the docks had halted. All else had been in readiness, and all the others were aboard. The ship waited only for Thick and me. Men from other ships and passersby stared at Thick's strangeness avidly, with varying degrees of revulsion on their faces. Sailors from the Tusker waited to haul the planks of the walkway on board and cast off lines. They stared at us in annoyance, waiting. I sensed from them that we humiliated them by our very presence. Why could not we get on board and out of sight belowdecks? Time to act. I took his upper arm firmly. “Thick, we have to get on board now.”
“No!” He bellowed the word suddenly as he slapped at me wildly, and both his fear and his fury struck me in a wild wave of Skill. I staggered aside from him, bringing a general guffaw from those who had halted to watch us. In truth, it must have looked strange to them, that the petulant slap of a half-wit had nearly driven me to my knees.
I hate to recall what followed. I had no choice but to force him. But Thick's terror left him no choice either. We fought it out on the docks, my physical size and strength and the stoutness of my well-practiced walls against his Skill and awkward fighting abilities.
Both Chade and Prince Dutiful were instantly aware of my dilemma, of course. I sensed the Prince trying to reach Thick and calm him, but the red haze of his anger acted as efficiently as any Skill-wall. I could not feel Chade's presence at all; I think his effort of the day before had drained him. The first time I seized Thick with the intent of simply lifting him off his feet and carrying him aboard, his Skill flooded into me. The skin-to-skin contact left me vulnerable. It was his fear that he flung at me, and I nearly wet myself with the terror he woke in me. Ancient memories of moments when death's jaws had closed around me rushed through me. I felt the teeth of a Forged One sink into my shoulder and an arrow thudded home in my back. I had lifted him to my shoulder, and I sagged to my knees, under the weight of his terror rather than his body. This elicited a fresh roar of laughter from the onlookers. Thick broke free of me and then stood there, crying out wildly and wordlessly, at bay, unable to flee, for now a circle of jeering men ringed us.
The mockery around us grew and battered me more effectively than Thick's flailing fists. I could not grasp hold of him without risking the integrity of my walls, nor did I dare lower my walls against Thick's onslaught to allow my own Skill to have its full effect. So I made futile efforts at herding him aboard, closing off his escape whenever he tried to dart past me down the docks. When I stepped toward him, he would step back, closer to the gangplank, and the circle of men there would give way. Then he would dart at me, hand outstretched, knowing that if he touched me, my walls would fall before him. And I would be forced to give ground to avoid his reaching hand. And all the while, men laughed and shouted to their comrades in their harsh tongue, to come and see a Duchyman who could not fight a half-wit.
In the end, it was Web who saved me. Perhaps the excited cries of the sailors on the Tusker brought him to the railing. The bulky sailor pushed his way past the gawkers and came down the gangway toward us. “Thick, Thick, Thick,” he said calmingly. “Come now, man. There's no need for this. No need at all.”
I had known that the Wit could be used to repel someone. Who has not leaped back from the clashing teeth of a dog or narrowly avoided the swipe of a cat's claws? It is not just the threat that forces one to give ground, but the force of the creature's anger that pushes its challenger back. I think that for a Witted one, to learn to repel is as instinctive as knowing how to flee danger. I had never stopped to think that there might be another complementary force, one that calmed and beckoned.
I did not have a word for what Web exuded toward Thick. I was not his target, yet I was still peripherally aware of it. It settled my hackles and calmed my thundering heart. Almost without my volition, my shoulders lowered and my jaw unclenched. I saw a wondering look come over Thick's face. His mouth sagged open and his tongue, which was never completely inside it, protruded even more as his little eyes drooped almost closed. Web spoke softly. “Easy, my friend. Relax. Come now, come with me.”
There is a look a kitten gets when its mother lifts it by the nape of its neck. That look was on Thick's face as Web's big hand settled on his arm. “Don't look,” Web suggested to him. “Eyes on me, now,” and Thick obeyed him, looking up at Web's face as the Witmaster led him aboard the ship as easily as a lad leads a bull by the ring in its nose. I was left trembling, the sweat drying down my spine. The blood rushed to my face at the taunting of the men that accompanied my boarding of the ship. Most of them spoke Six Duchies in a rudimentary way. That they used it now was deliberate, to be sure I understood their scorn. I could not pretend to ignore them, for I could not control the blood that reddened my face with shame. I had no place I could vent my anger as I stalked after Web. I heard the planks taken up behind me as soon as I was on board. I didn't look back, but trailed after Web and Thick toward a tentlike structure on the deck of the ship.
The accommodations were far cruder than those on the Maiden's Chance had been. On the foredeck, there was a permanent cabin with wooden walls, such as I was accustomed to seeing on a ship. I was to learn it was divided into two chambers. The larger of these had been given over to the Prince and Chade, and the Wit coterie crowded into the smaller one. This temporary cabin on the aft deck was for the guardsmen. The walls were made of heavy leather stretched on poles with the entire structure lashed down to pegs set in the deck. These shelters were a concession to our Six Duchies sensibilities; the Outislanders themselves preferred an open deck as best for hauling freight or fighting. A look at the faces of my fellow guardsmen persuaded me of how little welcome Thick would be amongst them. After my shameful performance on the dock, I was little higher in their regard. Web was trying to get Thick to sit down on one of the sea chests that had been brought from the Maiden's Chance.
“No,” I told him quietly. “The Prince prefers that Thick be housed close at hand to him. We should take him to the other cabin.”
“It's even more crowded than this one,” Web explained, but I only shook my head.
“The other cabin,” I insisted, and he relented. Thick went with him, still with that glazed look of trust on his face. I followed, feeling as exhausted as if I'd spent a morning in sword training. It was only later that I realized it was Web's own pallet he settled Thick onto. Civil sat in the corner on a smaller pallet, his snarling cat on his lap. The minstrel Cockle was disconsolately inspecting three broken strings on a small harp. Swift was looking everywhere but at me. I could feel his dismay that this half-man had been brought right into his living space. The silence in the tiny room was thicker than butter.
Once Thick had settled on the pallet, Web smoothed a callused hand over his sweaty brow. Thick stared up at us in puzzlement for a moment and then closed his eyes, weary as a child. His breathing was hoarse as sleep claimed him. After the buffeting he'd dealt me, I longed to join him there, but Web was taking my arm.
“Come,” he said. “We have to talk, you and I.”
I would have resisted him if I could, but when he set his hand on my shoulder, my defiance melted. I let him steer me out onto the deck. I heard the jesting shouts of the sailors when I reappeared, but Web chose to ignore them as he steered me to a rail. “Here,” he said, and from his hip took a leather flask and unstoppered it. The scent of brandy reached me. “A bit of this down you, and then take some deep breaths. You look like a man who has bled half to death.”
I did not think I needed the brandy until I took some and felt its heat run through me.
Fitz?
The Prince's worried query reached me as a whisper. I realized abruptly how tightly I was still holding my walls. Gingerly I eased them down, and then reached back to Dutiful. “I'm fine. Web has Thick settled now.”
“That's right. I do. But you scarcely need to tell me that.”
Give me a moment, my Prince, to gather myself. I had not even realized that I had spoken aloud the thought I'd previously Skilled to Dutiful. “I know. I'm a bit rattled, I suppose.”
“Yes, you are. What I don't understand is why. But I have my suspicions. The simple man is very important to the Prince, isn't he? And it has something to do with how he could stop a warrior in his prime from forcing him to do a thing he didn't wish to do. What made you flinch before his touch? When I touched him, nothing happened to me.”
I handed him back his flask. “Not my secret,” I said bluntly.
“I see.” He took a mouthful of his brandy. He looked aloft pensively. Risk did a lazy loop around our ship, waiting for us. Canvas blossomed suddenly on the mast. A moment later, it bellied in the wind and I felt our ship dip and then gather speed. “Short journey, they tell me. Three days, four at most. If we'd taken the Maiden's Chance, she would have had to sail around the whole cluster of islands, and then we would have had to put her at harbor on one of the other islands and still take another shallow-draft vessel to reach Wuislington.”
I nodded sagely to that, not knowing if it was true or not. Perhaps his bird had told him. More likely, it was sailor's gossip, gained by his own ready ears.
As if it were a logical continuation, he asked, “If I were to guess this secret, would you tell me I'd got it right?”
I gave a short sigh. Only now that the struggle was over did I realize how weary I was. And how strong Thick had been when driven by his fear and anger to apply all his strength to me. I hoped he had not burned reserves he could not afford. His sickness had already drained much of his vigor. He had thought himself in a life-or-death struggle with me; of that I had no doubt. Concern for him suddenly filled me.
“Tom?” Web pressed me, and with a start I recalled his question.
“It's not my secret,” I repeated doggedly. Hopelessness was welling up in me like blood from a puncture wound. I recognized it as Thick's. That didn't help. I'd have to quell it somehow, before it could affect the rest of the people on the ship.
Can you handle him for us?
The assent I sent to the Prince was an acknowledgment of his request rather than a confirmation that I could accomplish it.
Web was offering me his flask again. I took it, swigged from it, and then said, “I have to go back to Thick. It's not good for him to be left alone.”
“I think I see that,” he agreed as he took the flask back from me. “I wish I was sure whether you were protector or gaoler to him. Well, Tom Badgerlock, when you judge that it's safe for me to be the one to stay with him, you let me know. You look as if you could use a bit of rest yourself.”
I nodded without replying and I left him there and went to the little chamber allotted to the Wit coterie. All the other folk had fled, probably made uncomfortable by the strength of the emotions emanating from Thick on a swelling Skill tide. He slept, but it was from exhaustion, not peace. I looked down on his face, seeing a simplicity there that was not childish or even simple. His cheeks were flushed and tiny beads of sweat stood on his forehead. His fever was back and his breathing was raspy. I sat on the floor by his pallet. I was ashamed of what we were doing to him. It wasn't right and we knew it, Chade and Dutiful and I. Then I gave in to my weariness and lay down at his side.
I gave myself three breaths to center myself and gather my Skill. Then I closed my eyes and put my arm lightly across Thick in order to deepen our Skill-connection. I had expected him to have his walls up against me, but he was defenseless. I slipped into a dream in which a lost kitten paddled desperately in a boiling sea. I drew him from the water as Nettle had done and took him back to the wagon and the bed and the cushion. I promised him that he was safe and felt his anxiety ease a little. But even in his dreams, he recognized me. “But you made me!” the kitten suddenly cried out. “You made me come on a boat again!”
I had expected anger and defiance, or even an attack following those words. What I received was worse. He cried. The kitten wept inconsolably, in a small child's voice. I felt the gulf of his disappointment that I could betray him so. He had trusted me. I picked him up and held him, but still he cried, and I could not comfort him, for I was at the base of his sorrow.
I was not expecting Nettle. It was not night, and I doubted that she was sleeping. I suppose I had always assumed that she could only Skill when she slept. A foolish notion, but there it was. As I sat rocking the tiny creature that was Thick, I felt her presence beside me. Give him to me, she said with a woman's weariness at a man's incompetence. Guilty at my relief, I let her take him from me. I faded into the background of his dream, and felt his tension ease as I retreated from him. It hurt that he found my presence upsetting, but I could not blame him.
After a time, I found myself sitting at the base of the melted tower. It seemed a very forsaken place. The dead brambles coated the steep hillsides all around it, and the only sound was the wind soughing through their branches. I waited.
Nettle came. Why this? she asked, sweeping an arm at the desolation that surrounded us.
It seemed appropriate, I replied dispiritedly.
She gave a snort of contempt and then, with a wave, made the dead brambles into deep summer grasses. The tower became a circle of broken stone on the hillside, with flowering vines wandering over it. She seated herself on a sun-warmed stone, shook out her red skirts over her bare feet, and asked, Are you always this dramatic?