still shamed and pained him. He still carried that burden of guilt for something that had happened so long ago. It stabbed deeper that soon he would know that I had betrayed him as well.
It wasn’t your fault. I offered him comfort through our link. He refused it. Then, as if from a distance and yet clear, his thoughts reached mine.
I knew it would happen. I’d foretold it myself, when I was a child. That the one closest to you would betray you. Yet I could not believe that it would be me. And so I fulfilled my own prophecy.
We all survived.
Barely.
‘Are you Skilling to one another?’ Chade asked testily. I both heard and felt his words.
I took a deeper breath and sank deeper into the Skill. ‘Yes,’ I breathed. ‘I can reach him. But only just. And only because we have been Skill-linked before.’
‘Would you have more than this?’ The Fool’s voice was less than a whisper. I discerned a challenge in his words, but could not understand it.
‘Yes, please. Try,’ I bade him.
Beside me at the table, I was aware of the Fool making some small movement but my vision was unfocused on the room and I had no warning of his intentions until his hand settled on my wrist. His fingertips unerringly found their own faded grey fingerprints, left on my flesh so many years ago. His touch was gentle, but the sensation was an arrow in my heart. I physically spasmed, a speared fish, and then froze. The Fool ran through my veins, hot as liquor, cold as ice. For a flashing instant, we shared physical awareness. The intensity of it went beyond any joining I’d ever experienced. It was more intimate than a kiss and deeper than a knife thrust, beyond a Skill-link and beyond sexual coupling, even beyond my Wit-bond with Nighteyes. It was not a sharing, it was a becoming. Neither pain nor pleasure could encompass it. Worse, I felt myself turning and opening to it, as if it were my lover’s mouth upon mine, yet I did not know if I would devour or be devoured. In another heartbeat, we would be one another, know one another more perfectly than two separate beings ever should.
He’d know my secret.
‘No!’ I cried before he could discover my plot against him. I wrenched myself free, mind and body. For a long time I fell, until I struck the cold stone floor. I rolled under the table to escape that touch, gasping. My time of blackness seemed to last for hours, yet it was only an instant before Chade dragged my curled body from under the table. He propped me against his chest as he knelt beside me. Dimly I was aware of him demanding, ‘What happened? Are you hurt? What did you do to him, Fool?’
I heard a sob escape Thick. He alone, perhaps, had sensed what had transpired. A prickling shiver ran over my body. I could not see anything. Then I realized my eyes were tightly clenched shut, my body huddled in a ball. Knowing those things, it still took me a time to persuade myself I could change them. Just as I opened my eyes, the Fool’s thought uncurled in my mind like leaf opening to sunlight.
And I set no limits on that love.
‘It’s too much,’ I said brokenly. ‘No one can give that much. No one.’
‘Here’s brandy,’ Dutiful said close by me. It was Chade who hauled me into a sitting position and put the cup to my lips. I gulped it as if it were water, then wheezed with the shock. When I managed to turn my head, the Fool was the only one still sitting in his chair at the table. His hands were gloved again, and the look he gave me was opaque. Thick crouched in a corner of the room, hugging himself and shivering. His Skill-music was his mother’s song, a desperate attempt to comfort himself.
‘What happened?’ Chade demanded in a fierce voice. I still leaned against his chest, and I could feel the anger emanating from him like heat. I knew he directed his accusatory glare at the Fool, but I answered anyway.
‘It was too intense. We formed a Skill-link that was so complete, I couldn’t find myself. As if we’d become one being.’ I called it the Skill yet I was not sure that was a proper name for it. As well call a spark the sun. I took a deeper breath. ‘It scared me. So I broke free of it. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.’ And those words were spoken as much to the Fool as to the others. I saw him hear them, but I think he took a different message from them than what I had intended.
‘And it affected you not at all?’ Chade demanded of him.
Dutiful helped me to my feet. I needed his aid. I sank down into a chair almost immediately. Yet it was not weariness I felt, but a loose energy. I could have scaled Buckkeep’s highest tower, if I could have recalled how to make my knees bend.
‘It affected me,’ the Fool said quietly. ‘But in a different way.’ He met my eyes and said, ‘It didn’t frighten me.’
‘Shall we try it again?’ Dutiful proposed innocently, and ‘No!’ Chade, the Fool and I all replied with varying degrees of emphasis.
‘No,’ the Fool repeated more quietly in the tiny silence that followed. ‘For myself, I’ve learned enough today.’
‘Perhaps we all have,’ Chade concurred gruffly. He cleared his throat and went on, ‘It’s time we dispersed to our own tasks anyway.’
‘We’ve still plenty of time,’ Dutiful protested.
‘Ordinarily, yes, that would be so,’ Chade agreed. ‘But the days run away from us now. You’ve much to do to prepare for our journey, Dutiful. Rehearse your speech thanking the Outislanders for their welcome again. Remember, the “ch” is sounded toward the back of the throat.’
‘I’ve read it a hundred times now,’ Dutiful groaned.
‘And when the time comes, the words must seem to come from your heart, not from a scroll.’
Dutiful nodded grudgingly to this. He gave one longing look at the bright and breezy day outside the window.
‘Off you both go, then,’ Chade told him, and it was suddenly clear he was dismissing both Thick and Dutiful.
Disappointment crossed the Prince’s face. He turned to Lord Golden. ‘When we are at sea, and have more time and fewer tasks, I’d like to hear of your time with my father. If you wouldn’t mind. I know that you cared for him when he … at the end of his days.’
‘I did,’ the Fool replied gently. ‘And I’d be glad to share my memories of those days with you.’
‘Thank you,’ Dutiful replied. He went to the corner, and gently chivvied Thick along, asking him what on earth had frightened him, for no one had been hurt. I was grateful that Thick had no intelligible answer to that.
They were nearly at the door when I recalled my earlier resolution. ‘Prince Dutiful, would you come to my workroom this evening? I’ve something for you.’
He raised an eyebrow, but when I said no more, he replied, ‘I’ll find time. I’ll see you then.’
Dutiful left with Thick trudging at his heels. But at the door, Thick turned and gave the Fool an oddly appraising look before he transferred his gaze to me. I wondered uneasily how much he had sensed of what had passed between the Fool and me. Then Thick was gone, shutting the door rather too firmly behind himself.
For a moment, I feared that Chade
