Robin Hobb: Fool's Quest

I had to do better by my daughter, and so I would. But there was little I could do about it until I returned home. The gifts would have to suffice until I could be there for Bee.

I spindled my note and tied it with some of Chade’s twine. I found his sealing wax, melted a bit onto the knot, and imprinted the blob with my signet ring. No charging buck for FitzChivalry Farseer, only the badger’s footprint that belonged to Holder Tom Badgerlock. I stood and stretched. I’d need to find a courier.

My Wit prickled. My nostrils flared, trying to find a scent. I did not move, but I let my gaze rove about the room. There. Behind a heavy tapestry of hounds pursuing a deer that concealed one of the secret entryways to the chamber, someone breathed. I centered myself in my body. My own breathing was silent. I did not reach for a weapon but I shifted my weight so that I could stand, move, leap, or drop to the floor in an instant. I waited.

“Don’t attack me, sir, please.” A boy’s voice. The words had a country lad’s drawn-out vowels.

“Come in.” I made no promises.

He hesitated. Then, very slowly, he pushed the tapestry to one side and stepped out into the dim light of the chamber. He showed me his hands, the right one empty, the left holding a scroll. “A message for you, sir. That’s all.”

I assessed him carefully. Young, perhaps twelve. His body had not yet turned the corner to manhood. Bony, with narrow shoulders. He’d never be a large man. He wore the Buckkeep blue of a page. His hair was brown and as curly as a water dog’s, and his eyes were brown as well. And he was cautious. He’d shown himself but not stepped far into the room. He had sensed danger and announced himself to me, which raised him in my estimation.

“A message from whom?” I asked.

The tip of his tongue wet his lips. “A man who knew to send it to you here. A man who taught me the way to come here.”

“How do you know I’m the one it’s for?”

“He said you’d be here.”

“But anyone might be here.”

He shook his head but didn’t argue with me. “Nose broken a long time ago and old blood on your shirt.”

“Bring it to me, then.”

He came like a fox thinking of stealing a dead rabbit from a snare; he walked lightly and did not take his eyes from me. When he reached the table’s edge, he set the scroll down and stepped back.

“Is that all?” I asked him.

He glanced around the room, at the firewood and the food. “And whatever else you might wish me to fetch for you, sir.”

“And your name is . . .?”

Again he hesitated. “Ash, sir.” He waited, watching me.

“There’s nothing else I need, Ash. You may go.”

“Sir,” he replied. He stepped back, not turning nor taking his eyes from me. One slow step after another, he retreated until his hands touched the tapestry. Then he whisked himself behind it. I waited, but did not hear the scuff of his steps on the stairs.

After a moment, I rose silently and ghosted toward the tapestry. But when I snatched it back, empty air met my gaze. He was gone as if he’d never been there. I permitted myself a nod. On his third try, Chade seemed to have found himself a worthy apprentice. I wondered how much of the training he did, or if Lady Rosemary taught the boy, and where they had found him . . . and then I set it firmly out of my thoughts. None of my business. And if I were wise, I’d ask few questions and become as little involved in the current state of assassinations and politics at Buckkeep as I could. My life was complicated enough already.

I was hungry, but thought I’d wait a bit longer to see if the Fool would wake and eat with me. I went back to the worktable and drew Chade’s scroll toward me. Within the first two lines, I felt the webs of Buckkeep intrigue tightening around me again. “As you are here, with little to do other than wait for his health to improve, perhaps you are willing to make yourself useful? Clothing has been provided, and the expectation has been planted that the court will be visited by Lord Feldspar of Spiretop, a small but well-established holding in the far northwest corner of Buck. Lord Feldspar is as stony as his name, fond of drink, and there is a rumor that a copper mine on his holding has recently begun to produce very fine-grade ore. Thus he has come to Buckkeep to be a party to the current trade negotiations.”

There was more. I was never once addressed by name, the handwriting was not recognizably Chade’s, but, oh, the game clearly was. I finished reading the scroll and went to consider the outlandish dress that had been left for me. I sighed. I had some time yet before I would be expected to join them for an evening meal and conversation in the Great Hall. I knew my role. Talk little, listen a great deal, and report back to Chade all details as to who sought to make me an offer and how rich the offer was. I could not imagine what the greater game was. I knew that Chade would have decided what I needed to know and given me exactly that much. Weaving his webs as he ever did.

And yet despite my annoyance, I felt a stirring of the old excitement as well. It was Winterfest eve. The castle kitchen would have outdone itself, there would be music and dancing and folk from all over the Six Duchies. With my new identity and in clothes that would both draw attention to me and mark me as a stranger, I would once more spy for Chade as I had when I was a youth.

I held the dress up against me. No. Not a dress, a fussy and foppish long jacket, to go with the impractical shoes. The buttons were dyed bone, carved into little blue posies, and they were not just on the front but on the long cuffs as well. Lots of buttons. Buttons that did no buttoning but were mere ornamentation. The fabric was soft, a kind I had not seen before, and when I held the garment by the shoulders it proved far heavier than I had expected. I frowned, then quickly realized that the secret pockets had already been loaded for me.

I found a very nice set of small burglary picks and a tiny fine-tooth saw blade. In another pocket was an extremely sharp blade of the sort favored by cutpurses. I doubted I was deft enough to ply that trade. The few times I’d done it for Chade, it had been not for the coins but to see what love-notes were in Regal’s purse, or which servant seemed to possess far more wages than an honest servingman would carry. Years ago. So many years ago.

I heard a low moan from the Fool’s bed. I slung the jacket over my arm and hastened to his side. “Fool. Are you awake?”

His brow was lined, his eyes tightly closed, but at my voice something almost like a smile bent his mouth. “Fitz. It’s a dream, isn’t it?”

“No, my friend. You’re here at Buckkeep. And safe.”

“Oh, Fitz. I am never safe.” He coughed a bit. “I thought I was dead. I became aware, but then there wasn’t any pain, and I wasn’t cold. So I thought I was dead, finally. Then I moved, and all the pains woke up.”

“I’m sorry, Fool.” I was to blame for his most recent injuries. I hadn’t recognized him when I saw him clutching Bee. And so I had rushed to save my child from a diseased and possibly mad beggar, only to discover that the man I had stabbed half a dozen times was my oldest friend in the world. The swift Skill-healing I’d imposed had closed the knife wounds and kept him from bleeding to death. But it had weakened him as well, and in the course of that healing, I’d become aware of the multitude of old injuries and infections that still raged inside him. Those would kill him slowly, if I could not help him gain strength enough for a more thorough healing. “Are you hungry? There’s beef cooked to tenderness by the hearth. And red wine, and bread. And butter.”

He was silent for a time. His blind eyes were a dull gray in the dim light of the room. They moved in his face as if he still strove to see out of them. “Truly?” he asked in a shaky voice. “Truly all that food? Oh, Fitz. I almost don’t dare to move, lest I wake up and find the warmth and the blankets all a dream.”