With sudden relief, I heard his key in the lock. I strode to the door, and opened it for him, proclaiming before he stepped in, “Lord Golden, a visitor awaits you. A Lady Jek. She says this is a—”
Before I could get any further in my warning speech, he pushed past me in a most uncharacteristic rush. He shut the door behind him as if Lady Jek were a puppy that might race out into the corridor, and he latched it before he turned toward her. His face was as pale as I’d seen it in years as he confronted his unexpected guest.
“Lord Golden?” Jek exclaimed. For a long moment she stared. Then she burst into hearty laughter, pounding a doubled fist against her thigh. “But, of course. Lord
Golden
! How could I not have guessed? I should have seen through it from the start!” She advanced on him, completely confident of a warm welcome, to hug him heartily and then step back. As she gripped him by the shoulders, her delighted gaze wandered over his face and hair. To me, he looked dazed, but her grin didn’t fade. “It’s marvelous. If I didn’t know, I never would have guessed. But I don’t understand. Why is this ruse necessary? Doesn’t it make it difficult for the two of you to be together?” She glanced from him to me, and it was apparent the question was addressed to both of us. Her implication was obvious, although I could not fathom her reference to a “ruse.” I felt the rush of heat and color to my face. I waited for Lord Golden to make some clarifying remark to her but he held his silence. The look I wore must have shocked her, for she turned her gaze back to Lord Golden. She spoke uncertainly. “Amber, my friend. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
Lord Golden’s face seemed immobilized. His jaws moved and then he finally spoke. His voice was low and calm but still seemed somewhat breathless. “Tom Badgerlock, I have no further need of your services today. You are dismissed.”
Never had it been harder for me to remain in my role, but I sensed desperation in Lord Golden’s retreat to formality. I clenched my teeth and bowed stiffly, containing my seething affront at Jek’s obvious assumption about us. My own voice was icy as I answered him.
“As you will, my lord. I will take the opportunity to rest.” I turned and retreated to my own chamber. As I passed the table, I took a candle. I opened my door, went into my room, and shut the door behind me. Almost.
I am not proud of what I did next. Shall I blame it on Chade’s early training of me? I could, but that would not be honest. I burned with indignation. Jek obviously believed Lord Golden and I were lovers. He had not bothered to correct her misconception; her words and manner told me that he was the source of it. To some end of his own, he allowed her to continue in that belief.
It was the way Jek had looked at me, as if she knew far more about me than I knew of her. Obviously, she knew Lord Golden, but from another place and by another name. I was sure I had never seen her before. So, whatever she knew of me, she knew from the Fool. I justified my spying on the grounds that I had the right to know what he had said about me to strangers. Especially when it made a stranger look from him to me and smile in a way so knowing and so offensive. What things had he said about me to her, to make her assume such a thing? Why? Why would he? Outrage struggled to blossom in me, but I suppressed it. There would be a reason, some driving purpose behind such talk. There had to be. I would trust my friend, but I had a right to know what it was. I set the candle on my table, sat down on my bed, and gripped my hands in my lap. I forced myself to discard all emotion. And no matter how distasteful my situation, I would be rational in my judgment. I listened. Their conversation came faintly to my straining ears.
“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” There was more than surprise or annoyance in the Fool’s voice. It was almost despair.
“How could I let you know?” Jek demanded cheerfully. “The Chalcedeans keep sinking all the ships that head this way. From the few letters I’ve received from you, it’s obvious that half my own have gone awry.” Then, “So, admit it. You are Lord Golden? I’ve been conducting your affairs all this time?”
“Yes.” He sounded exasperated. “And it is the only name that I am known by in Buckkeep. So I would thank you to bear that in mind at all times.”
“But you told me that you went to visit your old friend, Lord Golden, and that all my correspondence to you must be sent through him. And what of all the transactions I’ve made in Bingtown and Jamaillia? All the inquiries I’ve made and the information I’ve sent you? Were all of those actually for you, as well?”
He spoke tightly. “If you must know, yes.” And then, pleading, “Jek, you look at me as if I’ve betrayed you. I haven’t. You are my friend, and I was not pleased to deceive you. But it was necessary. This ruse, as you put it, all of this, is necessary. And I cannot explain why to you, nor can I tell you the whole of it. I can only repeat to you, it is necessary. You hold my life in your hands. Tell this tale in a tavern some night, and you might as well have slit my throat now.”
I heard the sound of Jek’s body dropping into a chair. When she spoke, there was a trace of hurt in her voice. “You deceived me. And now you insult me. After all we’ve been through, do you really doubt my ability to hold my tongue?”
“I did not set out to do either,” said someone. And the hair on the back of my neck rose, for the voice was neither Lord Golden’s nor the Fool’s. This voice was lighter and devoid of any Jamaillian accent. Amber’s voice, I surmised. Yet another façade for the person I thought I knew. “It is just... you have taken me by surprise, and frightened me badly. I entered this room and there you were, grinning as if it were a fine joke, when actually you... Ah, Jek, I cannot explain it. I simply must trust to our friendship, and to all we have been through together, all we have been to one another. You have stumbled into my play, and now I fear you must take up a role in it. For the duration of your visit, you must speak to me as if I am truly Lord Golden, and as if you are my agent in Bingtown and Jamaillia.”
“That’s easy enough for me to do, for such I have been. And you speak truly when you say we are friends. It hurts me still that you thought any of this deception was needed between us. Still, I suppose I can forgive it. But I wish I understood it. When your man, this...Tom Badgerlock, when he came in and I recognized his face, I was filled with joy for you. I watched you carve that figurehead. Don’t deny to me what you feel for him. ‘They are reunited at last,’ I thought to myself. But then you bark at him and send him off as if he were a servant... Lord Golden’s serving man, in fact, is what he told me he was. Why the masquerade, when it must be so difficult for both of you?”
A long silence followed. I heard no sound of footsteps, but I recognized the chink of a bottle’s neck against a glass’ lip. I guessed that he poured wine for both of them as Jek and I awaited his answer.
“It is difficult for me,” the Fool replied in Amber’s voice. “It is not so difficult for him, because he knows little of it. There. Fool that I am and have been, truly, to have ever let that secret have breath to anyone, let alone shape. Such a monstrous vanity on my part.”
“Monstrous? Immense! You carved a ship’s figurehead in his likeness, and hoped no one would ever guess what he meant to you? Ah, my friend. You manage everyone’s lives and secrets so well and then when it comes to your own...Well. And he doesn’t even know that you love him?”
“I think he chooses not to. Perhaps he suspects... well, after chatting with you, I am certain that he suspects now. But he leaves it alone. He is like that.”
“Then he’s a damned fool. A handsome damned fool, though. Despite the broken nose. I’ll wager he was even prettier before that happened. Who spoiled his face?”
A small sound, a little cough of laughter. “My dear Jek, you’ve seen him. No one could spoil his face. Not for me.” A pretty little sigh. “But come. I’d rather not talk of it, if you don’t mind. Tell me of other things. How is Paragon?”
“Paragon. The ship or the pirate princeling?”
“Both. Please.”
“Well, of the heir to the Pirate Islands throne, I know little more than what is common gossip. He’s a lively, lusty boy, the image of King Kennit, and his mother’s delight. The whole Raven fleet’s delight and darling, actually. That’s his middle name, you know. Prince Paragon Raven Ludluck.”
“And the ship?”
“Moody as ever. But in a different way. It’s not that dangerous melancholy he used to sink into, more like the angst of a young man who fancies himself a poet. For that reason, I find it much more annoying to be around him when he’s moping. Of course, it’s not entirely his fault. Althea’s pregnant, and the ship obsesses about the child.”
“Althea’s pregnant?” This “Amber” took a woman’s delight in such tidings.
“Yes,” Jek confirmed. “And she’s absolutely furious about it, despite Brashen walking on air and choosing a new name for the child every other day. In fact, I think that’s half of why she’s so irritable. They were wed in the Rain Wild Traders Concourse...I wrote to you about that, didn’t I? I think it was more to placate Malta, who seemed humiliated by her sister’s cavalier attitude toward her arrangement with Brashen than for any desire on Althea’s part to be married. And now she’s with child, and puking her guts up every dawn, and spitting at Brashen whenever he gets solicitous of her.”
“She must have known that eventually she’d get with child?”
“I doubt it. They’re slow to conceive, those Traders, and half the time, they can’t carry the calf to term. Her sister Malta’s lost two already. I think that’s half of Althea’s anger; that if she knew she’d have a baby to show for all the puking and cramps, she might accept it gracefully, even welcome it. But her mother wants her to come home to have it, and the ship insists the babe will be born on his decks and Brashen would let her give birth in a tree, so long as he had a baby to dandle and brag over afterward. The constant stream of advice and suggestions just leaves her spitting mad. That’s what I told Brashen. ‘Just quit talking to her about it,’ I said to him. ‘Pretend you don’t notice and treat her like you always have.’ And he said, ‘And how am I to do that, when I’m watching her belly rub the lines when she tries to run the rigging?’ But of course, she was just around the corner when he said that, and she overheard, and like to burn his ears off with the names she called him.”
And so they went on, gossiping together like good wives at a market. They discussed who was pregnant, and who was not but wished to be, doings at the Jamaillian harbors and courts, politics of the Pirate Islands, and Bingtown’s war with Chalced. If I had not known who was in the other room, I would not have guessed. Amber bore no resemblance to Lord Golden or the Fool. The change was that complete.
And that was the second thing that scalded me that evening. Not just that he had spoken of me to strangers, in such detail that Jek could recognize me and believe I was his lover, but that there still remained a life or lives of his that I had no knowledge about. Strange, how being left out of a secret always feels like a betrayal of trust.
I sat alone by the light of my candle and wondered who, in truth, the Fool was. I scraped together in a small heap all the tiny hints and clues that I had gathered over the years and considered them. I’d put my life in his hands any number of times. He’d read all my journals, demanded a full reporting of all my travels, and I’d given them to him. And what had he offered to me in return? Riddles and mysteries and bits of himself.
And like cooling tar, my feelings for the Fool hardened as they grew colder. The injury grew in me as I thought about it. He had excluded me. The heart knows but one reaction to that. I would now exclude him. I stood and then walked to the door of my room. I shut it completely, not loudly, but not caring if he noticed that it had been ajar. I triggered the secret door and then crossed the room to open it. I entered the spy labyrinth. I wished that I could close that door and leave that part of my life behind me. I tried. I walked away from it.
There are few things so tender as a man’s dignity. The affront I felt was a thing both painful and angry, a weight that grew in my chest as I climbed the stairs. I fingered all my grievances, numbering them to myself.
How dared he put me in this position? He had compromised his own reputation when we visited Galekeep in search of Prince Dutiful. He had kissed young Civil Bresinga, deliberately setting off a social flap that misled Lady Bresinga as to the purpose of our visit at the same time it got us expelled from her home. Even now, Civil avoided him with distaste, and I knew that his act had inspired a squall of excited gossip and speculation about his personal preferences at Buckkeep. I thought I had managed to hold myself aloof from those rumors. Now I reconsidered. There had been Prince Dutiful’s question. And suddenly my confrontation with the guardsmen in the steams took on a new connotation. Blood burned my face. Would Jek, despite her assurances of a still tongue, become a source of even more humiliating talk? According to her words, the Fool had carved my countenance onto a ship’s figurehead. I felt violated that he would do such a thing without my consent. And what had he said to folk while he was carving it, to lead to Jek’s assumption?
I could not fit what he had done with either what I knew of the Fool or what I knew of Lord Golden. It was the act of this Amber, a person I knew not at all.
Hence I did not truly know him at all. And never had.
And with that, I unwillingly knew I had worked my way down to the deepest source of my injury. To discover that the truest friend I had ever had was actually a stranger was like a knife in my heart. He was another abandonment, a missed step in the dark, and a false promise of warmth and companionship. I shook my head to myself. “Idiot,” I said quietly. “You are alone. Best get used to it.” But without thinking, I reached toward where there had once been comfort.
And in the next instant, I missed Nighteyes with a terrible physical clenching in my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut, and then walked two more steps and sat down on the little bench outside the spyhole to the Narcheska’s apartments. I blinked, denying the stinging boy’s tears that clung to my eyelashes. Alone. It always came back to alone. It was like a contagion that had clung to me since my mother had lacked the courage to defy her father and keep me, and since my father had abandoned his crown and holdings rather than own up to me.