“You are indeed. But you have other duties, more pressing ones. Burrich has no chance at all if he stays here. Get him onto the ship and back to Zylig. They may have skilled healers there. At the very least, they will have a place that is warm, with decent food and a clean bed for him.”
“My father is going to die, FitzChivalry. Let us not pretend otherwise.”
Oh, the power that lurks in the naming of names. I let go. “You are right, Swift. But he need not die in the cold, under a piece of flapping canvas. That much we can give him.”
Swift scratched his head. “I want to do my father's will in this. I think he would tell me to stay with you. That I cannot be as useful to him as I could be to you.”
I thought about it. “Perhaps he would. But I do not think your mother would tell you that. I think you need to be with him. He may rally again, before the end, and what words he may have for you could be precious ones. No, Swift. Go with him. Be with him, for me.”
He did not reply, but bowed his head to my words.
Even as we spoke, men were dismantling our camp and loading it aboard the ship. I think it shocked Swift when it was the Outislanders who came for him and Burrich. Bear came, to incline his head gravely to the boy and ask the honor of transporting him and his father aboard the Hetgurd ship. “Demon-slayers,” he named both of them, and I think it shocked Swift to realize that he had been left to grieve in isolation out of respect, not out of negligence. The Owl, their bard, sang them aboard the Bear ship, and though he twisted the words in their bard's tongue, still I heard with throat-choking pride of the man who had brought the dragon-demon to its knees and the boy who slew it to set the Pale Woman's hostages free. Web, I noted, rode out in the boat with them, and would be taking ship with Swift. This comforted me. I did not want the lad to be alone among strangers, no matter how they might honor him when Burrich died, and I feared he would not live to see Zylig port.
Then the Prince was at my side, demanding to know which ship I was embarking upon. “You are welcome on either, but it will be close quarters no matter which you choose. They did not expect to carry off this many people. We shall be packed like salt fish in a keg. Chade, in his wisdom, has chosen to separate me from the Narcheska, so I will be on the Bear ship. Chade goes on the Boar ship with Peottre and his women, for he hopes to further advance the final negotiations of our alliance during the voyage.”
I had to smile, despite my heavy heart. “Alliance, you still call it? It has begun to look like a wedding to me. And have you given Chade reason to think it best to separate you from Elliania for the voyage to Zylig?”
He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking. “Not I! It was Elliania who proclaimed she was satisfied as to her challenge to me to be worthy of her, and declared that she now regarded me as her husband. I do not think her mother was entirely pleased, but Peottre declined to oppose her. Chade has tried to explain to Elliania the necessity of my vowing to her in my 'mothershouse,' but she will have none of that. She asked him, 'And what is a man, to oppose a woman's will in this matter?' ”
“I would have loved to hear his reply to that,” I said.
“He said, 'Truly, lady, I do not know. But my queen's will is that her son shall not bed with you until you have stood before her and her nobles in her house, and proclaimed that you are satisfied he is worthy of you.' ”
“And did she accept that?”
“Not graciously.” The Prince was obviously flattered by his bride-to-be's eagerness. “But Chade has extracted a promise from me that I will act with restraint. Not that Elliania has made that easy for me. Ah, well. So I sail on the Bear ship and she on the Boar. Chade will be on the Boar, and we think Thick, for the Outislanders have made much of him and his Eda's Hands. So. Which one for you? Come on the Bear. You can be with Burrich and Swift and me.”
“Neither ship will I board. But I'm glad to hear you'll be on the Bear ship with Swift. This is a hard time for him. He may bear it better among friends.”
“What do you mean, neither?”
Time to announce it. “I'm staying here, Dutiful. I need to go back and try to find the Fool's body.”
He blinked, considering it, and then, in an act of understanding that warmed me, simply accepted that I had to do it. “I'll stay with you, of course. And you'll need some men, if you're hoping to tunnel down through the dragon pit.”
It touched me that he did not argue the necessity of it, and that he offered to delay his own triumph. “No. You go on. You've a narcheska to claim and an alliance to create. I'll need no one, for I'm hoping to go back in where Riddle and the others came out.”
“That's a fool's errand, Fitz. You'll never find it again. I listened to Riddle's answers as closely as you did.”
I smiled at his choice of words. “Oh, I think I will. I can be tenacious about things like this. All I ask is that you leave me what food you can spare and any extra warm clothing you have. It may take me some time to accomplish this.”
He looked uncertain at those words. “Lord FitzChivalry, forgive me for saying this, but this may be a rash risk of yourself, for no gain. Lord Golden is beyond feeling anything. There is little chance you will find a way back in, let alone find his body. I do not think I am wise to allow this.”
I ignored his final statement. “And that is another thing. You will be going back to enough chaos. You scarcely need Lord FitzChivalry's resurrection in the midst of it. I suggest that you meet quietly with your Wit coterie and still all their tongues about me. I've already spoken to Longwick. I don't think I need worry about Riddle. Everyone else is dead.”
“But...the Outislanders know who you are. They've heard you called by that name.”
“And it has no significance for them. They won't recall my true name any more than I can recall Bear's or Eagle's. I'll simply be the crazy one who stayed on the island.”
He threw his hands wide in a gesture of despair. “And we are still back to you remaining on this island. For how long? Until you starve? Until you find that your quest is as futile as mine was?”
I pondered it briefly. “Give me a fortnight,” I said. “Then arrange for a boat to come back here for me. If I haven't succeeded in a fortnight, I'll give it up and come home.”
“I don't like this,” he grumbled. I thought he would argue further, but then he countered with “A fortnight. And I won't wait to hear from you, so do not Skill to me to beg for more time. In a fortnight, there will come a boat to this beach to take you off. And regardless of your success or failure, you will meet it and board it. Now, we have to hurry, before they've finished loading everything.”
But in the end, that was an idle fear. The crews were actually unloading things from the ships to make more room for the extra passengers. Chade grumbled and swore at my stubbornness, but in the end, he had to give way to me, mostly because I would not change my mind and everyone else was in a great rush to leave on the change of the tide.
It was still surpassing strange to stand on the shore and watch the ships borne away on the tide's change. Heaped behind me on the beach was a miscellaneous dump of equipment. I had far too many tents and sleds for one man to use, and an adequate if very uninteresting supply of food. In the time between the ships' vanishing and the fall of night, I picked through what they had left me, loading what I thought I'd actually use into my own battered old pack. I put in extra clothing, as much food as I thought I would need, and my feathers from the Others beach. Longwick had left me a very serviceable sword; I think it had been Deft's. I had Longwick's own belt knife. The Fool's tent and bedding I kept, setting it up for my night's shelter, and his cooking supplies, as much because they were his as because they were the lightest to pack. Chade, I found to my amusement, had left me a small keg of his blasting powder. As if I'd risk tinkering with that again! My hearing was still not what it should have been. Yet, in the end, I did put a pot of it into my pack.
I built up a good fire for myself that night. Driftwood was not plentiful on the beach, but there was only one of me to warm, so I indulged myself. I had expected to find the peace that isolation usually brought to me. Even when my spirits were darkest, solitude and the natural world had always comforted me. But tonight, I did not feel that. The restless humming of the submerged stone dragon was like a simmering reminder of the Pale Woman's evil. I wished there were a way to still it, to cleanse the evil carving back to honest stone again. I made up a generous pot of hot porridge for myself and recklessly sweetened it with some barley sugar that Dutiful had left for me.
I had just taken my first mouthful when I heard footsteps behind me. I choked and sprang to my feet, drawing my sword. Thick stepped into the circle of my firelight, grinning sheepishly. “I'm hungry.”
I swayed with the shock of it. “You can't be here. You're supposed to be on the ship, going back to Zylig.”
“No. No boats for me. Can I have some dinner?”
“How did you stay behind? Does Chade know? Does the Prince? Thick, this is impossible! I have things to do, important things to do. I can't look after you right now.”
“They don't know yet. And I'll look after myself!” he huffed. I'd hurt his feelings. As if to prove he could, he went to the heap of abandoned cargo and rummaged until he came up with a bowl. I sat, staring at the flames, feeling completely defeated by fate. He came back into my firelight and sat down on a stone across from me. As he dished up more than half the porridge for himself, he added, “It was easy to stay. I just sent with Chade, with Chade at Prince, and with Prince, with Prince at Chade. They believed me and got on the boats.”
“And no one else noticed you were missing?” I asked skeptically.
“Oh. I went don't see me, don't see me at the others. It was easy.” He resumed eating with pragmatic enjoyment of the food. He was obviously pleased with how clever he'd been. Between mouthfuls he asked, “How did you trick them into letting you stay?”
“I didn't trick them. I stayed because I had a task I had to do. I still do. They'll be back for me in a fortnight.” I put my head into my hands. “Thick. You've done me a bad turn. I know you didn't mean to, but it's bad. What am I going to do with you? What did you plan to do when you stayed here?”
He shrugged and spoke through the porridge. “Not get on a boat. That's what I planned. What did you plan to do?”
“I planned to go on a long walk, back to the icy place. And kill the Pale Woman if I could find her. And bring back Lord Golden's body, if I could find it.”
“All right. We can do that.” He leaned forward and looked into the porridge pot. “Are you going to eat that?”
“It seems not.” My appetite had fled, along with all thoughts of peace. I watched him eat. I had two choices. I knew I could not leave him alone on the beach while I went off to hunt the Pale Woman. It would have been like leaving a small child to look after himself. I could remain here with him on the beach for a fortnight until the boat that Dutiful had promised to send back for me arrived. Then I could send Thick off with it, and try to resume my tasks. By then, autumn would be upon this northern island. Falling snow would join the blowing snow to obscure all signs of passage. Or I could drag him along with me, proceeding at his plodding, torturous pace, taking him into danger. And taking him, also, into a very private part of my life. I did not want him to be there when I recovered the Fool's body. It was a task I wished and needed to do alone.
Yet there he was. Depending on me. And unwanted, there came to me the memory of Burrich's face when I had first been thrust into his care. So it had been for him. So it was for me now. I watched him scraping the last of the porridge from the kettle and licking the sticky spoon.
“Thick. It's going to be hard. We have to get up early and travel fast. We are going up into the cold again. Without much fire, and with very boring food. Are you sure you want to do this?”
I don't know why I offered him the choice.
He shrugged. “Better than getting on a boat.”
“But eventually, you will have to get on a boat. When the boat comes back for me, I'm leaving this island.”
“Nah,” he said dismissively. “No boats for me. Will we sleep in the pretty tent?”
“We need to let Chade and the Prince know where you are.”
He scowled at that, and I thought he might try to use the Skill to defeat me. But in the end, when I reached for them, he was with me, very much enjoying the prank he had played on them. I sensed their exasperation with him and their sympathy for me, but neither offered to turn back the ships. In truth, they could not. A tale such as they bore would not await the telling. Neither ship could turn back. For either the Prince or the Narcheska to be absent would not be acceptable to the Hetgurd. They must go on. Chade offered grimly to send back a boat for us the moment they docked in Zylig, but I told him to wait, that we would Skill to them when we were ready to leave. Not on a boat, Thick added emphatically, and none of us had the will to argue with him just then. I was fairly certain that when he saw me leave, he would depart with me. By then, he would probably be very weary and bored with survival here. I could not imagine him desiring to stay on the island alone.
And as the night wore on, I reflected that perhaps it was better for me that he was there, in some ways. When I bedded down in the Fool's tent that night, Thick seemed an intruder there, as out of place as a cow at a harvest dance. Yet, if he had not been there, I know I would have sunk into a deep melancholy, and dwelt on all I had lost. As it was, he was a distraction and an annoyance, and yet also a companion. In caring for him, I did not have time to examine my pain. Instead, I had to create a pack for him with a share of supplies that I thought he could carry. Into his pack I put mostly warm clothing for him and food, knowing he would not abandon food. But as I prepared for sleep, I already dreaded the morrow and dragging him along with me.