Robin Hobb - Fool's Errand

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."

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 nearly recovered my aplomb. "No, my Prince. I fear you are in vast error there."

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 bad-tempered 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 half-smile. "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 probably 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.