getting old.’ The Fool interrupted our chained thoughts.
‘So am I,’ I pointed out. ‘You, however, look as young as ever.’
‘Yet I’m substantially older than both of you put together. And tonight I feel every one of my years.’ As if to give the lie to his own words, he lithely drew his knees up tight to his chest and rested his chin upon them as he hugged his own legs.
If you drank some willow bark tea, it might ease you.
Spare me your swill and keep rubbing.
A small smile bowed the Fool’s mouth. ‘I can almost hear you two. It’s like a gnat humming near my ear, or the itch of something forgotten. Or trying to recall the sweet taste of something from a passing whiff of its fragrance.’ His golden eyes suddenly met mine squarely. ‘It makes me feel lonely.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not knowing what else I could say. That Nighteyes and I spoke as we did was not an effort to exclude him from our circle. It was that our circle made us one in a fundamental way we could not share.
Yet once we did, Nighteyes reminded me. Once we did, and it was good.
I do not think that I glanced at the Fool’s gloved hand. Perhaps he was closer to us than he realized, for he lifted his hand and tugged the finely-woven glove from it. His long-fingered, elegant hand emerged. Once, a chancing touch of his had brushed his fingers against Verity’s Skill-impregnated hands. That touch had silvered his fingers, and given him a tactile Skill that let him know the history of things simply by touching them. I turned my own wrist to look down at it. Dusky grey fingerprints still marked the inside of my wrist where he had touched me. For a time, our minds had been joined, almost as if he and Nighteyes and I were a true Skill coterie. But the silver on his fingers had faded, as had the fingerprints on my wrist and the link that had bonded us.
He lifted one slender finger as if in a warning. Then he turned his hand and extended his hand to me as if he proffered an invisible gift on those outstretched fingertips. I closed my eyes to steady myself against the temptation. I shook my head slowly. ‘It would not be wise,’ I said thickly.
‘And a Fool is supposed to be wise?’
‘You have always been the wisest creature I’ve known.’ I opened my eyes to his earnest gaze. ‘I want it as I want breath itself, Fool. Take it away, please.’
‘If you’re sure … no, that was a cruel question. Look, it is gone.’ He gloved the hand, held it up to show me and then clasped it with his naked one.
‘Thank you.’ I took a long sip of my brandy, and tasted a summer orchard and bees bumbling in the hot sunshine among the ripe and fallen fruit. Honey and apricots danced along the edges of my tongue. It was decadently good. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like this,’ I observed, glad to change the subject.
‘Ah, yes. I’m afraid I’ve spoiled myself, now that I can afford the best. There’s a good stock of it in Bingtown, awaiting a message from me to tell them where to ship it.’
I cocked my head at him, trying to find the jest in his words. Slowly it sank in that he was speaking the plain truth. The fine clothes, the blooded horse, exotic Bingtown coffee and now this … ‘You’re rich?’ I hazarded sagely.
‘The word doesn’t touch the reality.’ Pink suffused his amber cheeks. He looked almost chagrined to admit it.
‘Tell!’ I demanded, grinning at his good fortune.
He shook his head. ‘Far too long a tale. Let me condense it for you. Friends insisted on sharing with me a windfall of wealth. I doubt that even they knew the full value of all they pressed upon me. I’ve a friend in a trading town, far to the south, and as she sells it off for the best prices such rare goods can command, she sends me letters of credit to Bingtown.’ He shook his head ruefully, appalled at his good fortune. ‘No matter how well I spend it, there always seems to be more.’
‘I am glad for you,’ I said with heartfelt sincerity.
He smiled. ‘I knew you would be. Yet, the strangest part perhaps is that it changes nothing. Whether I sleep on spun gold or straw, my destiny remains the same. As does yours.’
So we were back to that again. I summoned all my strength and resolve. ‘No, Fool,’ I said firmly. ‘I won’t be pulled back into Buckkeep politics. I have a life of my own now, and it is here.’
He cocked his head at me, and a shadow of his old jester’s smile widened his lips. ‘Ah, Fitz, you’ve always had a life of your own. That is, precisely, your problem. You’ve always had a destiny. As for it being here …’ He shied a look around the room. ‘Here is no more than where you happen to be standing at the moment. Or sitting.’ He took a long breath. ‘I haven’t come to drag you back into anything, Fitz. Time has brought me here. It’s carried you here as well. Just as it brought Chade, and other twists to your fortunes of late. Am I wrong?’
He was not. The entire summer had been one large kink in my smoothly coiling life. I didn’t reply but I didn’t need to. He already knew the answer. He leaned back, stretching his long legs out before him. He nibbled at his ungloved thumb thoughtfully, then leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.
‘I dreamed of you once,’ I said suddenly. I had not been planning to say the words.
He opened one cat-yellow eye. ‘I think we had this conversation before. A long time ago.’
‘No. This is different. I didn’t know it was you until just now. Or maybe I did.’ It had been a restless night, years ago, and when I awakened the dream had clung to my mind like pitch on my hands. I had known it was significant, and yet the snatch of what I had seen had made so little sense, I could not grasp its significance. ‘I didn’t know you had gone golden, you see. But now, when you leaned back with your eyes closed … You – or someone – were lying on a rough wooden floor. Your eyes were closed; you were sick or injured. A man leaned over you. I felt he wanted to hurt you. So I …’
I had repelled at him, using the Wit in a way I had not for years. A rough thrust of animal presence to shove him away, to express dominance of him in a way he could not understand, yet hated. The hatred was proportionate to his fear. The Fool was silent, waiting for me.
‘I pushed him away from you. He was angry, hating you, wanting to hurt you. But I pressed on his mind that he had to go and fetch help for you. He had to tell someone that you needed help. He resented what I did to him, but he had to obey me.’
‘Because you Skill-burned it into him,’ the Fool said quietly.
‘Perhaps,’ I admitted unwillingly. Certainly the next day had been one long torment of headache and Skill-hunger. The thought made me uneasy. I had been telling myself that I could not Skill that way. Certain other dreams stirred uneasily in my memory. I pushed them down again. No, I promised myself. They were not the same.
‘It was the deck of a ship,’ he said quietly. ‘And it’s quite likely you saved my life.’ He took a breath. ‘I thought something like that might have happened. It never made sense to me that he didn’t get rid of me when he could have. Sometimes, when I was most alone, I mocked myself that I could cling to such a hope. That I could believe I was so important to anyone that he would travel in his dreams to protect me.’
‘You
