Fool's Quest (14 page)

I didn't hesitate. I'd had too much time in the last few days to remember all sorts of decisions that had been taken out of my hands. “I'm not angry, Riddle.” I stood and held out my hand. We clasped wrists and then he embraced me. I spoke by his ear. “I thought you had come here in fury over what I did to you as we passed through the Skill-pillars.”

He stepped back from me. “Oh, I'll leave that to Nettle. If she hasn't blasted the skin from your flesh with her words yet, you've that to look forward to. I don't know what will come of this, Fitz, but I wanted you to know that I've done my best to be honorable.”

“I can see that. As you always have, Riddle. No matter what comes of this, I will take your side and Nettle's.”

He gave a tight nod, then heaved a deep sigh and went over to sit on the chair I had offered him earlier. He clasped his hands and looked down on them.

“There's more, and it's bad news,” I guessed.

“Bee.” He said her name, took a deep breath, and then sat, wordless.

I sank back down onto the bed. “I remember what you said at the tavern, Riddle.”

He looked up at me suddenly. The muscles in his face were tight. “And the situation hasn't changed, Fitz. Nor the outcome. Nettle said she would talk to you, that this wasn't my burden. But it is. Even if I were not married to your daughter, as your friend it would still be my duty. Fitz, you have to give her up. You have to bring her here, to Buckkeep, where she can be properly supervised and educated. You know that. You do.”

Did I? I clenched my teeth to hold back my angry response. I thought back over the last month. How many times had I resolved to do better with Bee? And failed. How many times had I set her aside to deal with disasters and mayhem? I'd involved my nine-year-old daughter in disposing of a body and concealing a murder—even if she didn't know I'd killed the messenger. For the first time I thought of the potential danger to my child, if, indeed, there were pursuers still searching for the messenger. Or assassins seeking Shun and FitzVigilant. Chade had put those two with me for safekeeping, secure in his belief that I would protect them. I'd given no thought to that at all when I'd left everyone to bring the Fool to Buckkeep. No consideration that Bee might be in danger from assassins seeking their targets in my home. That last attempt on Shun's life had been a poisoning. The assassin had killed a kitchen boy instead of Shun. A sloppy job. And what if his next attempt was just as sloppy? Winterfest would open the doors of Withywoods to all sorts of folk. What if the assassin poisoned more than a single dish in his next try for Shun?

Why hadn't I seen this before?

“I've lost my edge,” I said quietly. “I'm not protecting her.”

Riddle looked puzzled. “I'm talking about your being a father, Fitz, not her guardsman. I think you're more than capable of protecting her life. But someone has to make sure she has that life for you to protect. Give your daughter an education and the opportunities appropriate to her station. The manners, the dress, the social experiences. She is the daughter of Lady Molly, as well as the child of Holder Badgerlock. It would be very appropriate for her to come to court and spend time with her sister.”

He was right. But, “I can't give her up.”

Riddle stood, squared his shoulders, and spoke firmly. “Then don't. Come with her, Fitz. Find a new name and come back to Buckkeep. This is where Bee belongs. And where you belong. And you know that.”

I stared at the floor. He waited some time for me to speak, and when I did not, he said more softly, “I'm sorry, Fitz. But you do know that we're right.”

He left quietly and as he shut the door behind him I wondered how difficult that had been for him. We'd known each other a long time. He had begun as a sort of spy for Chade and a bodyguard for when I needed someone to watch my back. He'd become a comrade and someone I'd trusted as we'd experienced terrible things. And then, somehow, he'd become the man who courted my daughter. Riddle would be the father of my grandchild. Strange. I'd trusted him with my life, more than once. I had no choice now, in that he must be trusted with not just my daughter's heart but the fate of the child they would have. I swallowed. And with Bee? Because I was failing her.

If I gave Bee to Riddle and Nettle, I could undertake the Fool's vengeance.

That traitorous thought made me want to vomit.

I got up suddenly. I could not think about it at the moment. I tried so hard, but there was just not enough time or enough of me. And trying was not doing. “Oh, Molly,” I said aloud and then clenched my jaws together. There had to be an answer, but I couldn't see it. Not now.

Time to go check on the Fool. I went to the window and looked out. I felt as if it should be late afternoon bordering on evening. Too much had happened already today. Kettricken was Witted. She was interested in Bee. Web wanted me to adopt a crow. I was to be a grandfather, possibly the grandfather of a Narcheska. And Riddle believed I was a failure as a father and wished to take my child from me. As I turned to head toward the stairs, Nettle tugged on my thoughts.

Riddle told me.
No point in pretending I did not know. She would feel the current of concern in my thoughts.

I knew he would, though I wish he had left it to me. Something about manly honor. Did you shout at him? Tell him he had shamed me and therefore you?

Of course not!
Her prickly sarcasm stung me.
Need I remind you that I am a bastard and know what it is to be seen as my father's shame?

Which is why you have always denied me entirely.

I … what? I never denied you.
Had I? Uncertainty flavored my thoughts. Memories flooded in. I had. Oh, yes, I had.
Only to protect you,
I amended.
Times were harsher then. To be not just the Bastard's daughter, but the child of the Witted Bastard, possibly possessing that dirty magic … some folk would have seen fit to kill you.

So you let Burrich claim me.

He kept you safe.

He did.
Her words were relentless.
And it kept you safe, when you chose to pretend you were dead. It kept the Farseer reputation safe, too. No inconvenient bastards to muddle the line of succession. Safe. As if “safe” were more important than anything else.

I hemmed my thoughts tightly from her. I was not sure what she was trying to tell me, but I was certain of one thing. I didn't want to hear it.

Well, my child will know who her parents are! And she will know who her grandparents were! I will see to that, I will give her that, and no one will ever be able to take it away from her!

Nettle, I—
But she was gone. I didn't reach after her. There was another daughter I had failed. I'd let her grow up believing she was the daughter of another man. I'd let her mother and Burrich believe I was dead. I'd told myself, all those years, that I was keeping her safe. But she had felt denied. And abandoned.

I thought of my own father, as I seldom did. I'd never even looked in his eyes. What had I felt, that he had abandoned me in Buckkeep to the care of his stablemaster? I stared at nothing. Why had I done the same to my elder daughter?

Bee. It wasn't too late for me to be a good father to her. I knew where I should be right now, and if I used the Skill-pillar, I could be there before nightfall. It was a little dangerous, but hadn't I risked more than that bringing the Fool through? It would be days before I dared risk any more healing on him. I should go home, gather Bee, and bring her back to Buckkeep. Not to give her up to Nettle, not for us to stay here, but to have her by me while I had to be here to tend the Fool. It made sense. It was what I should do.

The upper chamber was dark save for the reddish light from the fire. The Fool sat in the chair in front of it. I bit my tongue before I could ask him why he was sitting in the dark. He turned his face toward me as I approached. “There's a message for you. On the table.”

“Thank you.”

“A young man brought it. I'm afraid that when he walked in, I was half-asleep. I screamed. I don't know which of us was more terrified.” His voice reached for a note of mockery, and failed.

“I'm sorry,” I said, trying to rein in my wayward thoughts. There was no sense in sharing my anguish with him. There was nothing he could do to help me, except feel ashamed that he had pulled me away from my child.

I made myself focus on his string of anxious words.

“And now I'm afraid to go back to sleep. I didn't think of other people coming and going from here. I don't know how it could have escaped me. I know they must. But I can't stop thinking about them. What if they talk to others? People will know I'm hiding here. It won't be safe.”

“I'm going to light some candles,” I told him. I did not say that I needed to see his face because I could not tell how serious he was. As I kindled the first one, I asked him, “How are you feeling? Better than yesterday?”

“I can't tell, Fitz. I can't tell yesterday from early this morning. I can't tell early this morning from midnight. It's all the same for me, here in the dark. You come and you go. I have food, I shit, I sleep. And I'm frightened. I suppose that means that I'm better. I remember when all I could think about was how badly every part of my body hurt. Now the pain has subsided to where I can think about how scared I am.”

I lit a second candle from the first one and set them in the holders on the table.

“You don't know what to say,” he observed.

“I don't,” I admitted. I tried to set my own fears aside to deal with his. “I know you are safe here. But I also know that no matter how often I say that, it won't change how you feel. Fool, what can I do? What would make you feel better?”

He turned his face away from me. After a long moment, he said, “You should read your message. The boy blurted out it was important before he ran away.”

I picked up the small scroll on the table. Chade's spy-seal was on it. I broke the wax free and unrolled it.

“Fitz. Do I look that frightful? When I sat up in my chair and screamed, the boy screamed, too. As if he'd seen a corpse rise from the grave and shriek at him.”

I set the scroll aside. “You look like a very ill man who was deliberately starved and tortured. And your color is … odd. Not tawny, as you were in the days of Lord Golden, nor white as you were when you were King Shrewd's jester. You are gray. It's not a color one would expect a living man to be.”

He was silent for so long that I turned my eyes back to the scroll. There was to be another festive gathering tonight, the final one of the Winterfest before our nobility once more dispersed to their own duchies. Queen Elliania urged everyone to attend and asked everyone to wear their best to celebrate turning toward the growing light. Chade suggested that perhaps Lord Feldspar should make a trip to town and purchase some finery for the occasion. He suggested a tailor's shop, and by that I knew that the garments would have been ordered and rushed to be prepared for me.

“You're an honest man, Fitz.” The Fool's voice was dull.

I sighed. Had I been too honest? “What good would it serve for me to lie to you? Fool, you look terrible. It breaks my heart to see you this way. The only thing I can offer myself or you is that as you eat and rest and grow stronger, your health will improve. When you are stronger, I hope to use the Skill to urge your body to repair itself. That is the only comfort either of us has. But it will take time. And demand our patience. Haste will not serve us.”

“I don't have time, Fitz. Rather, I do. I have time to get better or time to die. But somewhere, I am sure, there is a son who needs to be rescued before the Servants of the Whites find him. With every day, with every hour, I fear they have already secured him. And with every day and every hour, I am mindful of the continued captivity of a hundred souls in a faraway place. It may seem it has little to do with us and Buckkeep and the Six Duchies, but it does. The Servants use them with no more thought than we give to penning up a chicken or wringing a rabbit's neck. They breed them for their insights into the future, and they use those insights to make themselves omniscient. It bothers them not at all when a baby is born who will never walk or can barely see. As long as they are pale and have prescient dreams, that is all they care about. The power of the Servants reaches even to here, twisting and turning events, bending time and the world to their will. They have to be stopped, Fitz. We have to go back to Clerres and kill them. It must be done.”

I said what I knew was true. “One thing at a time, my friend. We can only attempt one thing at a time.”

He stared sightlessly at me as if I had said the cruelest thing in the world to him. Then his lower jaw trembled, and he dropped his face into his broken hands and began to sob.

I felt sharp annoyance and then deep guilt that I'd felt it. He was in agony. I knew it. How could I feel annoyed at him when I knew exactly what he was experiencing? Hadn't I felt that way myself? Had I forgotten the times when my experiences in Regal's dungeons had washed over me like a wave, obliterating whatever was good and safe in my life and carrying me right back into that chaos and pain?

No. I tried to forget that, and in the last decade of years, for the most part I had. And my annoyance with the Fool was not annoyance but extreme uneasiness. “Please. Don't make me remember that.”

I realized I'd said the betraying words out loud. His only response was to cry louder, in the hopeless way of a child who has no hope of comforting himself. This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be.

“Tears can't undo it,” I said and wondered why I uttered the useless words. I both wanted to hold him and feared to. Feared that it would alarm him to be touched and feared even more that it would draw me tighter into his misery and wake my own. But at last I took the three steps that carried me around the table. “Fool. You are safe here. I know you can't believe it just yet, but it's over. And you are safe.” I stroked the broken hair on his head, rough as the coat of a sick dog, and then pulled him closer to cradle his head against my sternum. His clawlike hands came up and clutched my wrist, and he held himself tighter against me. I let him have his tears. They were the only things I could give him then. I thought of what I had wanted to tell him, that I had to leave him for a few days to get Bee.