Fools Errand by Robin Hobb
“Tell me,” she said quietly.
Ancient caution guarded my tongue. I did not know how much information Chade had given her. “We completed our errand. ”
“So I guessed,” she replied tartly. Then she sighed. “And I know better than to ask you what Lord Golden's errand was. But tell me of you. You look terrible . . . your hair chopped short, your clothes in rags. What happened?”
Of all I had been through, only one event was mine to share or not as I pleased. I told her. “Nighteyes is dead. ”
Rainfall filled her silence. Then she sighed deeply and put her arms around me. “Oh, Fitz,” she said quietly. She leaned her head against my scratched chest. I could see the pale part in her dark hair, and I smelled her scent and the wine she had drunk. Her hands moved softly on my back, soothingly. “Alone again. It isn't fair. Truly it isn't. You've the saddest song of any man I've ever known. ” The wind gusted and rain rode it to spatter against us, but still she held me, and a small warmth gathered between us. She said nothing more for a long time. I lifted my arms and put them around her. Just as it once had, it seemed inevitable. She spoke against my chest. “I've a room to myself. It's at the river end of the inn. Come to me. Let me take your hurt away. ”
“I . . . thank you. ” That won't mend it, I wanted to tell her. If she had ever known me at all, she would know that now. But words would not make her understand it if she could not sense it on her own. I suddenly appreciated the Fool's silence and distance. He had known. No other closeness could make up for the lack of my wolf.
The rain went on falling. She loosened her hold on me and looked up into my face. A frown divided her fine brows. “You aren't going to come to me tonight, are you?” She sounded incredulous.
Strange. I had been wavering in my resolve, but the very way she phrased the question helped me to answer it correctly. I shook my head slowly. “I appreciate the invitation. But it wouldn't help. ”
“Are you sure of that?” She tried to make her voice light and failed. She moved, her breasts brushing against me in a way that might have been accidental but was not. I stepped a little back from her, my arms falling to my sides.
“I'm sure. I don't love you, Starling. Not that way. ”
“It seems to me that you told me that once before, a long time ago. But for years, it did help. It did work. ” Her eyes searched my face. She smiled confidently.
It hadn't. It had only seemed to. I could have told her that, but it would have been an unnecessary honesty. So I only said, “Lord Golden expects me. I have to go up to him. ” She shook her head slowly. “What a grievous end to a sad tale. And I am the only one who knows the whole of it, and still I am not allowed to sing it. What a tragic lay it would make. You are the son of a king, who sacrificed all for his father's family, only to finish as the illused servant of an arrogant foreign noble. He doesn't even dress you well. The ignominy must cut you like a blade. ” She looked deep into my eyes, seeking . . . what? Resentment? Outrage?
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“It doesn't really bother me,” I replied in some confusion. Then, as if someone had drawn a curtain open and spilled out light, I understood. She did not know that Lord Golden was the Fool. She truly saw me as but his servant, passing a message to her on his behalf. For all of her minstrel cleverness, she looked at him and saw the wealthy Jamaillian lord. I fought the smile away from my face. “I am content with my position with him and grateful to Chade for arranging it. I am satisfied to be Tom Badgerlock. ”
For a moment she looked incredulous. The look faded into disappointment in me. Then she gave a small shake of her head. “I should have known you would be. It's what you always wanted, isn't it? Your own little life. To have no responsibility for your line or for what happens at court. To be one of the humble folk, counting for nothing in the long run. ”
All my earlier efforts to spare her feelings seemed vapid now. “I have to go,” I repeated.
“Hurry along to your master. ” She released me. Her voice was a trained talent, and her scorn danced in it with a scorpion's sting.
By a vast effort of will, I said nothing in reply. I turned and walked away from her back into the inn. I climbed the servants' stairs to our quarters, tapped, and let myself in.
I Dutiful lifted his head from the pillow to regard me. His dark hair was sleeked back, his skin flushed from his bath. The effect made him look young. The Fool's bed was empty.
“My Prince,” I greeted him. Then, “Lord Golden?” I queried the screened bath.
“He left. ” Dutiful let his head drop back to the pillow. “Laurel tapped on the door and wished to speak with him privately. ”
“Ah. ” It almost made me smile. Wouldn't that have intrigued Starling?
“He asked me to be sure you knew we had left you the bathwater. And leave your clothes outside the door. He's arranged for a servant to wash them and return them by morning. ”
“Thank you, my Prince. It is most kind of you to tell me. ”
“Please lock the door, he said. He said he would knock and awaken you when he returned. ”
“As you wish, my Prince. ” I stepped to the door and locked it. I doubted he would be back before dawn. “Is there anything else you require before I bathe, my Prince?”
“No. And don't talk to me like that. ” He turned his back on me, shouldering into the bed.
I undressed. As I peeled off my shirt, I made sure the feathers went with it. I sat down for a moment on my low pallet before removing my boots. The feathers from the beach slipped from the shirt's sleeve and under the thin blanket. I removed Jinna's charm and set it on the pillow. I arose, set my clothes outside the door, locked it again, and walked to the screened tub. As I climbed into the water, Dutiful's voice followed me. “Aren't you going to ask me why?”
The water in the tub had cooled to lukewarm, but it was still far hotter than the rain outside had been. I peeled the healer's bandaging from my neck. The scratches on my belly and chest stung as I lowered myself into the water. Then they eased. I sank farther down to soak my neck, as well.
“I said, aren't you going to ask me why?”
“I suppose it's because you don't want me to call you 'my Prince,' Prince Dutiful. ” The salve on my injuries was melting in the water, perfuming the air with its aromatic scent. Goldenseal. Myrrh. I closed my eyes and ducked under the water. When I came up, I helped myself to the little bowl of soap that had been left for the Prince. I worked it through what was left of my hair and watched the brown suds drip into the water. I ducked again to rinse it.
“You shouldn't have to thank me and wait on me and defer to me. I know who you are. Your blood's as good as mine. ”
I was grateful for the screen. I splashed a bit while I tried to think, hoping he would believe I hadn't heard him.
“Chade used to tell me stories. When he first started teaching me things. Stories about another boy he had taught, how stubborn he was, and also how clever. 'When my first boy was your age,' he'd say, and then tell a story about how you'd played tricks on the washer folk, or hidden the seamstress's shears to perplex her. You had a pet weasel, didn't you?”
Slink had been Chade's weasel. I'd stolen Mistress Hasty's shears on his orders, as part of my assassin's training in theft and stealth. Surely Chade hadn't told him that, as well. My mouth was dry. I splashed loudly and waited.
“You're his son, aren't you? Chade's son and hence my would it be a second cousin? On the wrong side of the sheets, but a cousin all the same. And I think I know who your mother was, too. She is a lady still spoken of, though none seems to know a great deal about her. Lady Thyme. ”
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I laughed aloud, then changed it into a cough. Chade's son by Lady Thyme. Now there was an apt pedigree for me. Lady Thyme, that noxious old harpy, had been an invention of Chade's, a clever disguise for when he wished to travel unknown. I cleared my throat and near
He was silent as I finished washing myself. I emerged from the tub, dried myself, and stepped out from behind the screen. There was a nightshirt on the pallet. As usual, the Fool had thought of everything. As I pulled it over my wet and bristly head, the Prince observed, “You've got a lot of scars. How'd you get them?”
“Asking questions of badtempered folk. My Prince. ” “You even sound like Chade. ”
An unkinder, more untrue thing had never been said of me, I was sure. I countered it with, “And when did you become so talkative?”
“Since there was no one around to spy on us. You do know Lord Golden and Laurel are spies, don't you? One for Chade and the other for my mother?”
He thought he was so clever. He'd have to learn more caution if he expected to survive at court. I turned and gave him a direct stare. “What makes you believe that I'm not a spy, as well?”
He gave a skeptical laugh. “You're too rude. You don't care if I like you; you don't try to win my confidence or my favor. You're disrespectful. You never flatter me. ” He laced the fingers of his hands and put them behind his head. He gave me an odd halfsmile. “And you don't seem concerned that I'll have you hanged for manhandling me back on that island. Only a relative could treat someone so badly and not expect ill consequences from it. ” He cocked his head at me, and I saw what I most feared in his eyes. Behind his speculation was stark need. His eyes bled unbearable loneliness. Years ago, when Burrich had forcibly parted me from the first animal I had ever bonded to, I had attached myself to him. I had feared the Stablemaster and hated him, but I had needed him even more. I had needed to be connected to someone who would be constant and available to me. I've heard it said that all youngsters have such requirements. I think that mine went deeper than a child's simple need for stability. Having known the complete connection of the Wit, I could no longer abide the isolation of my own mind. I counseled myself that Dutiful's turning to me prob' ably had more to do with Jinna's charm than with any sincere regard for me. Then I realized it still lay on my pillow. “I report to Chade. ” I said the words quickly, without embellishment. I would not traffic in deceit and betrayal. I would not let him attach himself to me, believing me to be someone I was not.
“Of course you do. He sent for you. For me. You have to be the one he said he'd try to get for me. The one who could teach me the Skill better than he can. ”
Truly, Chade's tongue had grown loose in his old age. He sat up in his bed and began to tick his reasoning off on his fingers. I looked at him critically as he spoke. Deprivation and grief still shadowed his eyes and hollowed his cheeks, but sometime in the last day or so, he had realized he would live. He held up his first finger. “You've a Farseer cast to your features. Your eyes, the set of your jaw . . . not your nose, I don't know where you got that from, but that's not family. ” He held up a second finger. “The Skill is a Farseer magic. I've felt you use it at least twice now. ” A third finger. “You call Chade 'Chade,' not 'Lord Chade' or 'Councillor Chade. ' And once I heard you speak of my lady mother as Kettricken. Not even Queen Kettricken, but Kettricken. As if you'd been children together. ”
Perhaps we had. As for my nose, well, that had come from a Farseer, too. It was Regal's permanent memento to me of the days I'd spent in his dungeon.
I walked to the branch of candles on the table, and blew them all out save one. I felt Dutiful's eyes follow me as I walked back to my pallet and sat down on it. It was low and hard, placed near the door, where I could guard my good masters. I lay down on it. “Well?” he demanded.
“I'm going to sleep now. ” I made it the end of the conversation.
He snorted contemptuously. “A real servant would jst, have begged my leave to extinguish the candles. And to go to sleep. Good night, Tom Badgerlock Farseer. ” “Sleep well, most gracious Prince. ” Another snort from him. Then silence, save for the rain thundering on the roof and splatting on the innyard mud. Silence, save for the soft crackling of the fire, and the distant music from the common room below. Silence but for unsteady footsteps making their way past our door. But most of all, the crashing silence in my heart where for so long Nighteyes' awareness had been a steady beacon in my darkness, a warmth in my winter, a guide star in my night. My dreams were thin, illogical human things now that frayed at a moment's waking. Tears flooded warm under my closed eyelids. I opened my mouth to breathe silently through my constricted throat and lay on my back.
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I heard the Prince shift in his bedding, and shift again. Very quietly, he rose from his bed and went to the window. For a time he gazed out at the rain falling in the muddy innyard. “Does it go away?” He asked the question in a very soft voice, but I knew it was for me.
I took a breath, forced steadiness into my voice. “No. ” “Not ever?”
“There may be another for you someday. But you never forget the first. ”
He did not move from the windowsill. “How many bondanimals have you had?”
I nearly didn't answer that. Then, “Three,” I said. He turned away from the night and looked at me through the darkness. “Will there be another one for you?” “I doubt it. ”
He left the window and returned to his bed. I heard him pull up his blankets and settle into them. I thought he would go to sleep, but he spoke again. “Will you teach me the Wit also?”
Someone had better teach you something, if it's only not to trust so quickly. “I haven't said I'd teach you anything. ”
He was silent for a time. He sounded almost sulky when he said, “Well, it were better if someone taught me something. ”
A long silence followed and I hoped he had gone to sleep. The uncanny way his words echoed my thought unnerved me. Rain beat against the thick whorl of glass in the window, and dark flowed into the room. I closed my eyes and centered myself. As gingerly as if I handled broken glass, I reached toward him.
He was there, still and taut as a crouching cat. I sensed him waiting and watching for me, yet unaware I stood at the borders of his mind. His rough Skillsense was an awkward, unhoned tool. I drew back a bit and studied him from all angles, as if he were a colt I was thinking of breaking. His wariness was a mix of apprehension and aggression. It was a weapon as much as a shield that he inexpertly wielded. Nor was it pure Skill. It is a hard thing to describe, but his Skill was like a white beacon edged with green darkness. His Witawareness of me was what he used to focus. The Wit does not reach from a man's mind to another man's mind, but the Wit can make me aware of the animal that the man's mind inhabits. So it was with Dutiful. Bereft of the cat as a focus, his Wit was a wideflung web, seeking a kinship. As was mine, I suddenly realized.
I recoiled from that and found myself back in my own flesh. I set my walls against the untrained fumbling of his Skill. Yet even as I did so, there were two things I could not deny. The thread of Skill that connected me to Dutiful grew stronger each time I ventured along it. And I had no idea of how to sever it, let alone remove my Skillcommand from his mind.
The third piece of knowledge was as bitter as the other parts were disturbing. I quested. I had no desire to form a bond with another animal. But without Nighteyes to contain it, my Wit sprawled out like seeking roots. Like water that overbrims a vessel and must seek a place to flow, the Wit went forth from me, silent yet reaching. Earlier I had seen need in the Prince's eyes, a desperate longing for connection and belonging. Did I radiate that same privation? I closed my heart and willed myself to stillness. Time would heal my grief. I repeated that lie until sleep claimed me. awoke when the light spilling in the window touched my face. I opened my eyes but lay still. The pale light filling the room after the dark of the storm was like being immersed in clear water. I felt curiously empty, as one does when one has been ill for a long time and then begins to mend. I caught at the edges of a fleeing dream, but clutched only the edges of a shining morning, the
I lifted my head, intending to look at them, but the room swung suddenly about me as if I'd had too much to drink. The realities of the day to come the long ride to Buckkeep, the meetings with Chade and Kettricken that would follow, the resumption of my life as Tom Badgerlock crashed down on me. I sat up slowly.
The Prince slept on in his bed. I turned and found the Fool regarding me sleepily. He lay on his side in bed, his chin propped on his fist. He looked weary, but insufferably pleased about something. The effect made him look years younger.
“ didn't expect to see you in your bed this morning,” I greeted him, and then, “How did you get in? I latched that door last night. ”
"Did you? Interesting. But you can scarcely be more surprised to see me in my own bed than I am to see you inyours.
I let that barb go past me. I scratched the bristle on my .
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cheek. “I should shave,” I said to myself, dreading the idea. I hadn't touched a blade to my face since we'd left Galekeep.
“Indeed you should. I'd like us to look as presentable as possible when we return to Buckkeep. ”
I thought of my catshredded shirt, but nodded acquiescence. Then I recalled the feathers. “I've something I want to show you,” I began, reaching under the pillow, but just then the Prince drew a deeper breath and opened his eyes.
“Good morning, my Prince,” Lord Golden greeted him. “ ”Morning,“ he acknowledged wearily. ”Lord Golden, Tom Badgerlock. " He looked and sounded marginally better than he had at the end of yesterday's ride. His formality toward me was back in place. I felt relief.
“Good morning, my Prince,” I greeted him. And so the day began. We ate in our room. Our cleaned and mended clothing arrived shortly after our breakfasts. Lord Golden looked almost restored to his former glory, and the Prince looked tidy if not exactly royal. As I had suspected, washing had done little to make my clothing more presentable. I begged a needle and thread from the servant who brought our food, saying I wished to tighten the sleeve in my mended shirt. The reality was that I required a pocket in it. Lord Golden looked at me and sighed. “Keeping you decently clothed may become the most expensive part of keeping you as a servant, Tom Badgerlock. Well, see what you can do with the rest of yourself. ”