sighed. His free hand shook out his glove and held it open as his silvered hand crept into it. He took up his cup in both hands. ‘To have the magic, Fitz. To be able to use the pillars more easily. To be able to shape wood again, as I once did. To touch someone or something and know it, from the bones out, as I once could.’ He drew in a deep breath and sighed it out. ‘When they tormented me … When they skinned my hand …’ He faltered. He took a slow sip of his brandy and said in a careless voice, ‘When I had no Skill on my fingers, I missed it. I wanted it back.’
‘Thymara said it would kill you.’
‘It was slow death for Verity and Kettle. They knew it. They raced to create the dragon and enter it before the Silver could kill them.’
‘But you lived for years with Silver on your fingertips.’
‘And you bore the marks of my fingers on your wrist for years. You didn’t die of it. Nor has Malta from my touch on her neck.’
‘Why not?’
He scowled at his teacup and drank to lower the level of brandy in it before he shifted onto his side to face me. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because I am not fully human. Perhaps because of the White heritage. Perhaps because you were trained to master the Skill. Perhaps because for you, like Malta, it was the barest brush of Silver on your skin. Or, for her, perhaps Tintaglia’s dragon-changes made her immune.’ He smiled. ‘So perhaps because there is something of a dragon in you. Elderling blood, from long ago. I suspect it entered the bloodlines of the Farseers when the first Holder came to the shores of what would be Buck. Perhaps the walls of Buckkeep are not as heavily infused with Skill as the walls of Kelsingra, but we both know there is some of it, in the Skill-pillars and in the oldest stones of the castle. Perhaps you are immune to it because you grew up with it, or perhaps you were born that way.’ He shook his head against the bed that had relaxed to cushion him. ‘We don’t know. But I think this,’ he held his gloved hand aloft and rubbed his fingertips together, ‘will be very useful to me when we reach Clerres.’
‘And the vials of Silver you asked for?’
‘Truthfully, I wished them for a friend. To improve his lot in life. And perhaps to win a favour of him.’
I trickled some brandy into my glass and refilled his teacup. We both drank. ‘Do I know this friend?’
He laughed aloud. It was a sound that had become so rare that I smiled to hear it, even when I did not know the reason. ‘No, you don’t know him yet. But you will.’ He looked at me with his pale gold eyes and I felt he could see me. ‘And you may find you have much in common,’ he said, and laughed again, a bit loosely. I didn’t ask. I knew better than to think he might answer a direct question. He surprised me when he asked, ‘You have never considered it? Adding a bit of Skill to your fingers?’
‘No.’ I thought of Verity, his hands and forearms coated with Silver, unable to touch his lady or hold her. I thought of the times when something, a fern or a leaf, had brushed against the Fool’s old fingerprints on my wrist and I’d had a disconcerting moment of full awareness of it. ‘No. I think I have enough problems with the Skill without making myself even more vulnerable to it.’
‘Yet you wore my fingerprints for years. And became very upset with me when I removed them.’
‘True. Because I missed that link with you.’ I took a sip of brandy. ‘But how did you remove them from my skin? How did you recall the Skill to your fingertips?’
‘I just did. Can you tell me how you reach out to Nettle?’
‘Not in a way you would understand. Not unless you had the Skill.’
‘Exactly.’
Silence fell between us for a time. I worked on my walls and felt the muttering of the city become a soft murmuring and then fade to blessed silence. Peace filled me for a moment. Then guilt welled up to fill the space the city’s muttering had occupied. Peace? What right had I to peace when I had failed Bee so badly?
‘Do you want me to take them back?’
‘What?’
‘My fingerprints on your wrist. Do you want me to take them back again?’
I thought briefly. Did I? ‘I never wanted you to remove them when you did. And now? I fear that if you put your hand to my wrist, we might both be swept away. Fool, I told you that I felt besieged by the magic. My latest encounter with the force of the Skill has left me very wary. I think of Chade and how he crumbled in the last few months. What if that were suddenly me? Not remembering things, not keeping my thoughts organized? I can’t let that happen. I have to keep my focus.’ I sipped from my glass. ‘We—I—have a task to complete.’
He made no response. I was staring at the ceiling but from the corner of my eye, I watched him drain his teacup. I offered him the bottle and he poured more for himself. Now was as good a time as any. ‘So, tell me about Clerres. The island, the town, the school. How will we get in?’
‘As for my getting in, that’s not a problem. If I show myself in a guise they recognize, they will be very anxious to take me back in and finish what they began.’ He tried for laughter, but abruptly fell silent.
I wondered if he had frightened himself. I sought for a distraction. ‘You smell like her.’
‘What?’
‘You smell like Amber. It’s a bit unnerving.’
‘Like Amber?’ He lifted his wrist to his nose and sniffed. ‘There’s barely a trace of attar of roses there. How can you smell that?’
‘I suppose there’s still a bit of the wolf in me. It’s noticeable because you usually have no scent of your own. Oh, if you are filthy, I smell the dirt on your skin and clothes. But not you, yourself. Nighteyes sometimes called you the Scentless One. He thought it very strange.’
‘I had forgotten that. Nighteyes.’
‘To Nighteyes. To friends long gone,’ I said. I lifted my glass and drained it, as did he. I quickly refilled his cup, and chinked the bottle against the lip of my glass.
We were both quiet for a time, recalling my wolf, but it was a different kind of silence. Then the Fool cleared his throat and spoke as if he were Fedwren teaching the history of Buck. ‘Far to the south and across the sea to the east is the land from which I came. I was born to a little farming family. Our soil was good; our stream seldom ran dry. We had geese and sheep. My mother spun the wool, my parents dyed it, my fathers wove with it. So long ago, those days, like an old tale. I was born to my mother late in her life and I grew slowly, just as Bee did. But they kept me, and I stayed with them for many years. They were old when they took me to the Servants at Clerres. Perhaps they thought themselves too old to care for me any longer. They told me I had to become what I was meant to be, and they feared they had kept me too long from that calling. For in that part of the world, all know of the White Prophets, though not all give the legends credence.
‘I was born on the mainland, on Mercenia, but we journeyed from island to island until we reached Clerres. It’s a very beautiful city on a bay on a large island named Kells in the old tongue. Or Clerres. Some call it the White Island. Along that coast and on several of the islands are beaches littered with immense bones. They are so old they have turned to stone. I myself have seen them. Some of those stony bones were incorporated into the stronghold at Clerres. For
