скачать книгу бесплатно
‘There’s little to tell that I didn’t Skill to you from the festivities. I think you have a quiet but effective pirate trade on the river that is avoiding all tariffs and taxes. And a sea captain ambitious enough to try to extend it to trade with Bingtown.’
‘And you know full well that is not what I need reported! Don’t quibble with me, Fitz. After you asked me about a healer, I tried to reach you again. And I could not, but I could sense how intensely involved you were elsewhere. I thought I was not strong enough to reach you, so I asked Nettle to try. And when neither of us could break in on you, we both came here. What were you doing?’
‘Just,’ I cleared my tight throat, ‘trying to help him heal. One of the boils on his back had opened by itself. And when I tried to clean it for him, I became aware that … that he’s dying, Chade. Slowly dying. There is too much wrong with him. I do not think he can gain strength fast enough for us to heal him. Good food and rest and medicine will, I believe, only delay what is inevitable. He’s too far gone for me to save him.’
‘Well.’ Chade seemed taken aback by my bluntness. He sank down into my chair and drew a great breath. ‘I thought we had all seen that, down at the infirmary, Fitz. It was one reason why I thought you’d want a quieter place for him. A place of quiet and privacy.’ His voice trailed away.
His words made what I faced more real. ‘Thank you for that,’ I said hoarsely.
‘It’s little enough, and sad to say, I doubt that there is more that I could do for either of you. I hope you know that if I could do more, I would.’ He sat up straight, and the rising flames of the fire caught his features in profile. I suddenly saw the effort the old man was putting into even that small gesture. He would sit upright, and he would come up all those steps in the creaking hours before dawn for my sake, and he would try to make it all look effortless. But it wasn’t. And it was getting harder and harder for him to maintain that façade. Cold spread through me as I faced the truth of that. He was not as near death as the Fool was, but he was drifting slowly away from me on the relentless ebb of aging.
He spoke hesitantly, looking at the fire rather than at me. ‘You pulled him back from the other side of death once. You’ve been stingy with the details on that, and I’ve found nothing in any Skill-scroll that references such a feat. I thought perhaps …’
‘No.’ I pushed another dab of unguent into a wound. Only two more to go. My back ached abominably from bending over at my task, and my head pounded as it had not in years. I pushed aside thoughts of carryme powder and elfbark tea. Deadening the body to pain always took a toll on the mind, and I could not afford that just now. ‘I haven’t been stingy with information, Chade. It was more a thing that happened rather than something I did. The circumstances are not something I can duplicate.’ I suppressed a shudder at the thought.
I finished my task. I became aware that Chade had risen and was standing beside me. He offered me a soft grey cloth. I spread it carefully over the Fool’s treated back and then pulled his nightshirt down over it. I leaned forward and spoke by his ear. ‘Fool?’
‘Don’t wake him,’ Chade suggested firmly. ‘There are good reasons why a man falls into unconsciousness. Let him be. When both his body and his mind are ready for him to waken again, he will.’
‘I know you’re right.’
Lifting him and carrying him back to the bed was a harder task than it should have been. I deposited him there on his belly and covered him warmly.
‘I’ve lost track of time,’ I admitted to Chade. ‘How did you stand it in here, all those years, with scarcely a glimpse of the sky?’
‘I went mad,’ he said genially. ‘In a useful sort of way, I might add. None of the ranting and clawing the walls one might expect. I simply became intensely interested in my trade and all aspects of it. Nor was I confined here as much as you might suspect. I had other identities, and sometimes I ventured forth into castle or town.’
‘Lady Thyme,’ I said, smiling.
‘She was one. There were others.’
If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me. ‘How long until breakfast?’
He made a small sound in his throat. ‘If you were a guardsman, you’d likely be getting up from it by now. But for you, a minor noble from a holding that no one’s ever heard of, on your first visit to Buckkeep Castle, well, you’ll be forgiven for sleeping in a bit after last night’s festivities. I’ll pass the word to Ash and he’ll bring you food after you’ve had a bit of a nap.’
‘Where did you find him?’
‘He’s an orphan. His mother was a whore of the particular sort patronized mostly by wealthy young nobles who have … aberrant tastes. She worked in an establishment about a day’s ride from here in the countryside. A useful distance from Buckkeep Town for the sorts of activities a young noble might wish to keep secret. She died messily in an assignation gone horribly wrong, for both her and Ash. An informant thought I might find it useful to know which noble’s eldest son had such proclivities. Ash was a witness, not to her death but to the man who killed her. I had him brought to me and when I questioned him about what he had seen, I found he had an excellent eye for detail and a sharp mind for recalling it. He described the noble right down to the design of the lace on his cuffs. He’d grown up making himself useful to his mother and others in her trade, and thus he has a well-honed instinct for discretion. And stealth.’
‘And the collecting of secrets.’
‘There is that, too. His mother was not a street whore, Fitz. A young noble could take her to the gaming tables or the finer entertainments in Buckkeep Town, and not be shamed by her company. She knew poetry and could sing it to a small lute she played. He’s a lad who has walked in two worlds. He may not have court manners, yet, and one can hear he’s not court-born when he speaks, but he’s not an ignorant alley rat. He’ll be useful.’
I nodded slowly. ‘And you want him to page for me while I’m here so …?’
‘So you can tell me what you think of him.’
I smiled. ‘Not so he can watch me for you?’
Chade opened his hands deprecatingly. ‘And if he does, what would he see that I don’t already know? Consider it part of his training. Set him some challenges for me. Help me hone him.’
And again, what was I to say? He was doing all for the Fool and me that could be done. Could I do less for him? I had recognized the unguent I’d pushed into the Fool’s wounds. The oil for it came from the livers of a fish seldom seen in our northern waters. It was expensive, but he had not flinched from giving it to me. I would not be chary of giving him whatever I could in return. I nodded. ‘I’m going down to my old room to sleep for a bit.’
Chade returned my nod. ‘You have overtaxed yourself, Fitz. Later, when you’ve rested, I’d like a written report on that healing. When I reached for you … well, I could find you, but it was as if you were not yourself. As if you were so immersed in healing the Fool that you were becoming him. Or that the two of you were merging.’
‘I’ll write it down,’ I promised him, wondering how I could describe for him something I didn’t understand myself. ‘But in return, I’ll ask you to select for me new scrolls on Skill-healing and lending strength. I’ve already read the ones you left for me.’
He nodded, well pleased that I’d asked for such things, and left me, slipping out of sight behind the tapestry. I checked on the Fool and found him deeply asleep still. I hovered my hand over his face, loath to touch him lest I wake him but worried that my efforts might have wakened a higher fever in him. Instead, he seemed cooler and his breathing deeper. I straightened, yawned tremendously and then made the error of stretching.
I muffled my yelp of pain. I stood still for a long moment, then carefully rolled my shoulders. I hadn’t imagined it. I reached behind myself and gingerly tugged my shirt free of where it had adhered to my back. I peeled it free and found Chade’s mirror. What I saw confounded me.
The oozing wounds on my back were far smaller than those on the Fool’s, nor were they puffed and reddened with infection. Instead they gaped, seven small injuries as if someone had repeatedly stabbed me with a dagger. They had not bled much; I judged them shallow. And given my propensity to heal quickly, they might very well be gone by the end of tomorrow.
The conclusion I had to reach was obvious. In Skill-healing the Fool’s wounds, I had taken on these small twins. A sudden memory stirred, and I examined my belly. There, just where I had closed the wounds my knife had made on the Fool’s body was a series of reddened dents. I prodded one and winced. Not painful but tender. My whirling thoughts offered me a dozen explanations. In sharing strength with the Fool, had I actually shared flesh with him? Were his wounds closing because mine were opened? I draped my shirt around me, added wood to the fire, gathered my buttony jacket and scuffed down the dusty steps to my old bedchamber. I hoped I would find some answers in the scrolls that Chade had promised me. Until I did, I would keep this small mishap to myself. I had no desire to participate in the experiments that Chade would doubtless envision if he knew of this.
I shut the door and it became undetectable. A glance out of my shuttered window told me that a winter dawn was not far away. Well, I would take what sleep I could still get and be grateful. I added a log to the dying fire on my hearth, draped my ruined finery on a chair, found Lord Feldspar’s sensible woollen nightshirt and sought my boyhood bed. My drowsy eyes travelled the familiar walls. There was the wandering crack in the wall that had always reminded me of a bear’s snout. I had made that gouge in the ceiling, practising a fancy move with a hand axe that had flown out of my grip. The tapestry of King Wisdom treating with the Elderlings had been replaced with one of two bucks in battle. I preferred it. I drew a deep breath and settled into the bed. Home. Despite all the years, this was home, and I sank into sleep surrounded by the stout walls of Buckkeep Castle.
FIVE (#ulink_deda47db-a27c-50f6-afac-13d100306a10)
An Exchange of Substance (#ulink_deda47db-a27c-50f6-afac-13d100306a10)
I am curled warm and snug in the den. Safe. I am tired and if I shift too much, I feel the marks of teeth on my neck and back. But if I am still, then all is well.
In the distance, a wolf is hunting. He hunts alone. It is a terrible sound he makes, desperate and breathless. It is not the full-throated howling of a wolf that calls to his pack. It is the desperate yipping and short breathless howls of a predator who knows his prey is escaping. He would be better to hunt silently, to save his failing strength for running instead of giving tongue.
He is so far away. I curl tighter in the warmth of my den. It is safe here and I am well fed. I feel a fading sympathy for a wolf with no pack. I hear the broken yipping again and I know how the cold air rushes down his dry throat, how he leaps through deep snow, extending his full body, literally flinging himself through the night. I remember it too well, and for an aching moment, I am him.
‘Brother, brother, come, run, hunt,’ he beseeches me. He is too distant for me to know more of his thought than this.
But I am warm, and weary, and well fed. I sink deeper into sleep.
I awoke from that dream a lifetime away from the last time I had hunted with the wolf. I lay still, troubled and feeling the fading threat of it. What had wakened me? What needed to be hunted? And then I became aware of the smell of hot food, bacon and meal-cakes and the reviving fragrance of tea. I twitched fully awake and sat up. The sound that had awakened me had been the closing of my door. Ash had entered, set down a tray, stirred up my fire and fed it, taken my soiled shirt and done it all so silently that I had slept through it. A shudder of dread ran over me. When had I become so complacent and senseless as to sleep through intruders in the room? That was an edge I could ill afford to lose.
I sat up, winced, and then reached behind me to touch my own back. The wounds were closing and had stuck to the mildly itchy wool. I braced myself and plucked the nightshirt free of them, all while berating myself for sleeping too soundly. Ah. Too much to eat, too much to drink, and the exhaustion of a Skill-healing. I decided I could excuse my lack of wariness on those grounds. It did not totally banish the chagrin I felt. I wondered if Ash would report my lapse to Chade, and if he would praise the lad and if perhaps they would laugh about it.
I stood up, stretched cautiously, and told myself to stop being such a child. So Ash had fetched my breakfast and I’d slept through it. It was ridiculous to let it bother me.
I had not expected to be hungry after all I’d eaten the night before, but once I sat down to the food, I found I was. I made short work of it and then decided I would check on the Fool before taking a bit more sleep. The Skill-work I had done last night had taxed me far more than any other endeavour I’d taken on recently. He had been the receiver of that work: had it exhausted him as it had me?
I latched the main door to my room, triggered the secret door and went softly up the stairs, back into a world of candles and hearth-fire twilight. I stood at the top of the steps and listened to the fire burning, something muttering and tapping in a pot on the hearth-hook, and the Fool’s steady breathing. All trace of last night’s activities had been cleared away, but at one end of Chade’s scarred worktable, clean bandaging, various unguents and a few concoctions for the relief of pain had been left out. Four scrolls rested beside the supplies. Chade seemed always to think of everything.
I stood looking down at the Fool for some time. He lay on his belly, his mouth slightly ajar. Lord Golden had been a handsome man. I recalled with the regret of loss the clean planes of his face, his light-gold hair and amber eyes. Scars striated his cheeks and thickened the flesh around his eyes. Most of his hair had succumbed to ill health and filth; what he had left was as short and crisp as straw. Lord Golden was gone, but my friend remained. ‘Fool?’ I said softly.
He made a startled sound somewhere between a moan and a cry, his blind eyes flew open and he lifted a warding hand toward me.
‘It’s just me. How are you feeling?’
He took a breath to answer and coughed instead. When he had finished, he said hoarsely, ‘Better. I think. That is, some hurts have lessened, but the ones that remain are still sharp enough that I don’t know if I’m better or just becoming more adept at ignoring pain.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘A bit. Fitz. I don’t remember the end of last night. We were talking at the table, and now I’m waking up in the bed.’ His hand groped toward his lower back and cautiously touched the dressings there. ‘What’s this?’
‘An abscess on your back opened. You fainted, and while you could not feel the pain, I cleaned it out and bandaged it. And a few others.’
‘They hurt less. The pressure is gone,’ he admitted. It was painful to watch his progress as he manoeuvred his body to the edge of the bed. He worked to get out of the bed with as few motions as possible. ‘If you would put the food out?’ he asked quietly, and I heard his unvoiced request that I leave him to care for himself.
Under the hopping kettle lid I found a layer of pale dumplings over a thick gravy containing chunks of venison and root vegetables. I recognized one of Kettricken’s favourite dishes and wondered if she were personally selecting the Fool’s menus. It would be like her.
By the time I had set out the Fool’s food, he was making his way to the hearth and his chair. He moved with more certainty, still sliding his feet lest there be an obstacle, still leading with an outstretched hand, tottering and wavering, but not needing nor asking my help. He found the chair and lowered himself into it. He did not allow his back to rest against the chair. As his fingers butterflied over the cutlery, I said quietly, ‘After you’ve eaten, I’d like to change the dressings on your back.’
‘You won’t really “like” to do it, and I won’t enjoy it, but I can no longer have the luxury of refusing such things.’
‘That’s true,’ I said after his words had fallen down a well of silence. ‘Your life still hangs in the balance, Fool.’
He smiled. It did not look pretty: it stretched the scars on his face. ‘If it were only my life, old friend, I would have lain down beside the road and let go of it long ago.’
I waited. He began to eat. ‘Vengeance?’ I asked quietly. ‘It’s a poor motive for doing anything. If you take vengeance it doesn’t undo what they did. Doesn’t restore whatever they destroyed.’ My mind went back through the years. I spoke slowly, not sure if I wanted to share this even with him. ‘One drunken night of ranting, of shouting at people that were not there,’ I swallowed the lump in my throat, ‘and I realized that no one could go back in time and undo what they’d done to me. No one could unhurt me. And I forgave them.’
‘But the difference, Fitz, is that Burrich and Molly never meant to hurt you. What they did, they did for themselves, believing you dead and gone. And for them, life had to go on.’
He took another bite of dumpling and chewed it slowly. He drank a bit of yellow wine and cleared his throat. ‘Once we were a good distance offshore, the crew did what I had known they would. They took whatever we had that they thought was of value. All the little cubes of memory-stone that Prilkop had painstakingly selected and carried so far were lost to him then. The crew had no idea what they were. Most could not hear the poetry and music and history that were stored in them. Those who could were alarmed. The captain ordered all the cubes thrown overboard. Then they worked us like the slaves they intended us to become once they found a place to sell us.’
I sat silent and transfixed. The words came from the usually reticent Fool in a smooth flow. I wondered if he had rehearsed his tale during his hours alone. Did his blindness accentuate his loneliness and propel him toward this openness?
‘I was in despair. Prilkop seemed to harden every day, muscled by the work, but I was too recently healed. I grew sicker and weaker. At night, huddled on the open deck, in the wind and rain, he would look up at the stars and remind me that we were travelling in the correct direction. ‘We no longer look like White Prophets, we two, but when we make shore, it will be in a place where people value us. Endure, and we will get there.’
He drank a bit more wine. I sat quietly and waited while he ate some food. ‘We got there,’ he said at last. ‘And Prilkop was almost correct. When we reached port, he was sold at the slave auction and I …’ His voice trickled away. ‘Oh, Fitz. This telling wearies me. I do not wish to remember it all. It was not a good time for me. But Prilkop found someone who would believe him, and before many days had passed, he came back for me. They bought me, quite cheaply, and his patron helped us complete our journey back to Clerres and our school.’
He sipped his wine. I wondered at the gap in his story. What was too terrible for him to remember?
He spoke to my thought. ‘I must finish this tale quickly. I have no heart for the details. We arrived at Clerres, and when the tide went out, we crossed to the White Island. There our patron delivered us to the gates of the school. The Servants who opened the doors to us were astonished for they immediately recognized what we were. They thanked our patron and rewarded him and quickly took us in. Collator Pierec was the Servant who was in charge, now. They took us to the Room of the Records, and there they leafed through scrolls and scripts and bound pages until they found Prilkop.’ The Fool shook his head slowly, marvelling. ‘They tried to reckon how old he was, and failed. He was old, Fitz, very old indeed, a White Prophet who had lived far past the end of his time of making changes. They were astonished.
‘And more astonished when they discovered who I was.’
His spoon chased food around his bowl. He found and ate a piece of dumpling, and then a piece of venison. I thought he was making me wait for the tale, and taking pleasure in my suspense. I didn’t begrudge him this.
‘I was the White Prophet they had discarded. The boy who had been told he was mistaken, that there was already a White Prophet for this time, and that she had already gone north to bring about the changes that must be.’ He clattered his spoon down suddenly. ‘Fitz, I was far more stupid than the Fool you have always named me. I was an idiot, a fatuous mindless …’ He strangled on his sudden anger, knotting his scarred hands and pounding them on the table. ‘How could I have expected them to greet me with anything except horror? For all the years they had kept me at the school, confined me, drugged me that I might dream more clearly for them … For the hours they spent needling her insidious images into my skin to make me unWhite! For all the days they tried to confuse and confound me, showing me dozens, hundreds of prophecies and dreams that they thought would convince me I was not what I knew myself to be! How could I have gone back there, thinking they would be glad to see me, and quick to acknowledge how wrong they had been? How could I think they would want to know they had made such an immense error?’
He began to weep as he spoke, his blinded eyes streaming tears that were diverted by the scars on his face. Some detached part of me noted that his tears seemed clearer than they had been and wondered if this meant some infection had been conquered. Another, saner part of me was saying softly, ‘Fool. Fool. It’s all right. You are here with me now, and they cannot hurt you any more. You are safe here. Oh, Fool. You are safe. Beloved.’
When I gave him his old name, he gasped. He had half-risen to stand over the table. Now he sank back down into Chade’s old chair, and heedless of his bowl and the sticky table, put his head down on his folded arms and wept like a child. For a moment, his rage flared again and he shouted, ‘I was so stupid!’ Then the sobbing stole his voice again. For a time, I let him weep. There is nothing useful anyone can say to a man when such despair is on him. Shudders ran over him like convulsions of sorrow. His sobs came slower and softer and finally ceased, but he did not lift his head. He spoke to the table in a thick, dead voice.
‘I had always believed they were mistaken. That they truly had not known.’ He gave a final sniff, a sigh and lifted his head. He groped for his napkin and wiped his eyes with it. ‘Fitz, they knew. They had always known I was the one. They knew I was the true White Prophet. The Pale Woman was the one they had made. They made her, Fitz, as if they were trying to breed a pigeon with a light head and tail. Or as if you and Burrich were breeding for a colt with the stamina of the stud and the temperament of the dam. They’d created her, there in the school, and they’d taught her and filled her with the prophecies and dreams that suited their purposes. They’d made her believe and twisted her dreams to make them foretell what they wanted to happen. And they’d sent her out. And held me back.’ His head sank down. He pillowed his brow on his forearms and fell silent.
One of Chade’s exercises when he was training me was to put the pieces of something back together. It began with simple things: he’d drop a plate, and I would have to reassemble it to the best of my ability. The challenges advanced. The plate would fall, and I had to look at the pieces and mentally assemble it. Then I would be presented with a bag of pieces of something, broken crockery or cut harness or something of that ilk, and I had to put it back into a whole. After a time, the bag would hold not just the destroyed item but other random bits of things that looked as if they belonged with it. It was a physical exercise to teach my mind to assemble bits of facts and random gossip into a comprehensible whole.
So now my mind was at work, assembling bits so that I could almost hear the snicking of pieces of a teapot being put back together. The messenger’s tale of bearing children who were taken from her meshed with the Fool’s tale of the Servants creating their own White Prophets. The race of Whites with their gift of prescience had vanished from our world long ago; the Fool had told me that when we were still boys. He claimed the Whites had begun to intermarry with humans, diluting their bloodlines until those who carried that heritage showed no sign of it and often were unaware of it. And he had added that only rarely was a child born who, by chance, reflected that ancient heritage. He had been one such, and was fortunate enough that when he was born his parents knew what he was. And they knew there was a school at Clerres where children who showed the physical traits of Whites were taken and taught to record their dreams and their flashes or visions of the future. Vast libraries of recorded visions were held there and studied by the Servants so that they might learn the events that the future of the world would turn upon. And so, while he was very young, his parents had given him to the Servants to be taught to use his talents for the good of all mankind.
But the Servants had not believed he was the one true White Prophet. I had known a little of that. He had confided that they had held him there long past the time when he felt he needed to be out, changing the world’s events to set us all on a better path. I had known that he had escaped them and set out on his own, to become what he had believed he must be.
And now I knew the darker side of that place. I had helped Burrich to select breeding lines for dogs and horses. I knew how it was done. A white mare and a white stallion might not always yield a white foal, but if they did, chances were that if we bred that white offspring to another white horse, or bred it back to a sibling, we would get a white foal. And so, if King Shrewd desired it, he could have generations of white horses for his guard. Burrich had been too wise a horse-breeder to inbreed our stock too deeply. He would have been shamed to have a crippled or malformed foal born due to his negligence.
I wondered if the Servants shared his morality in that regard. Somehow I doubted it. So if the Servants desired it, they could likewise breed children with the pale skin and colourless eyes of White Prophets. And in some, prescience would manifest. Through those children, the Servants could gain the ability to glimpse the future and the various paths it might take, depending on events large and small. By the Fool’s account, they had been doing it for generations, possibly since before he was born. So now the Servants had a vast reservoir of possible futures to study. The future could be manipulated, not for the benefit of the world at large, but for the comfort and good fortune of the Servants alone. It was brilliant, and it was obscene.
My mind made the next leap. ‘How can you fight people who know your next move before you do?’
‘Ah.’ He sounded almost pleased. ‘You grasp it quickly. I knew you would. Even before I give you the final bits, you see it. And yet, Fitz, they don’t. They didn’t see me returning at all. Why? Why would they resort to something as crude as physical torture to find out what I knew? Because you made me, my Catalyst. You created me, a creature outside of any future ever seen. I left you because I knew how potent we were together. I knew that we could change the future of the world, and I feared that if we remained together, with me blind to the future, we might set terrible things in motion. Unintentionally, of course, but all the more powerful for that. So I left you, knowing it tore your heart as deeply as it tore mine. And blind, even then, to the fact that we had already done exactly that.’
He lifted his head and turned his face toward me. ‘We blinded them, Fitz. I came seeking you, a lost Farseer. In almost every future I could foresee you either never existed or you died. I knew, I knew that if I could see you through and keep you alive, you would be the Catalyst to set the world into a new and better path. And you did. The Six Duchies remained intact. Stone dragons rose into the air, the evil magic of Forging was ended, and true dragons were restored to the world. Because of you. Every time I snatched you back from the brink of death, we changed the world. Yet all those things the Servants had also glimpsed, even if they believed they were unlikely to come to pass. And when they sent out their Pale Woman to be the false White Prophet, and kept me confined to Clerres, they thought they had guaranteed the outcome they wished. You would not exist
‘But we thwarted them. And then you did the unthinkable. Fitz, I died. I knew I would die. In all the prophecies I’d ever read in the Clerres library, in all the dream-visions I’d ever had, I died there. And so I did. But in no future foreseen by anyone, ever, in all their trove of prophecies, was I pulled back alive from the other side.
‘That changed everything. You flung us into a future unseen. They grope now, wondering what will become of all their plans. For the Servants do not plan for decades, but for generations. Knowing the times and means of their own deaths, they have extended their lives. But we have taken much of that power from them. The White children born since my “death” are the only ones who can look into the future from that time. They grope through the futures where once they galloped. And so they must seek that which they most fear now: the true White Prophet for this generation. They know he is out there, somewhere, beyond their knowledge and control. They know they must seize him soon, or all they have built may come tumbling down.’
His words rang with his conviction. And yet I could not keep a smile from my face. ‘So you changed their world. You are the Catalyst now. Not I.’
All expression fled his face. He stared past me, his filmed eyes fixed and distant. ‘Could such a thing be?’ he asked in wonder. ‘Is that what I glimpsed, once, in the dreams where I was not a White Prophet?’
‘I have no answer for that. I may no longer be your Catalyst, but I am certain I am not a prophet either. Come, Fool. The dressings on your back have to be changed.’
For a time he was very silent and still. Then, ‘Very well,’ he acceded.
I led him across the room to Chade’s table. He sat down on the bench there and his hands fluttered, settled and then explored the tabletop, finding the supplies Chade had set out for me. ‘I remember this,’ he said quietly.
‘Little has changed here over the years.’ I moved to the back of his seat and studied his nightshirt. ‘The wounds have oozed. I put a cloth on your back, but they’ve soaked through that as well. Your nightshirt is stuck to your back. I’m going to fetch warm water, soak it loose, and clean them again. I’ll fetch you a clean nightshirt now and set the water to warm.’
By the time I returned with the basin of water and the clean shirt, the Fool had arranged my supplies for me. ‘Lavender oil, by the scent of it,’ he said, touching the first pot. ‘Bear grease with garlic in here.’
‘Good choices,’ I said. ‘Here comes the water.’
He hissed as I sponged it onto his back. I gave the half-formed scabs time to soften and then gave him the choice. ‘Fast or slow?’
‘Slow,’ he said, and so I began with the lowest one on his back, a puncture far too close to his spine. By the time I had painstakingly freed the fabric from the oozing wound, sweat had plastered his hair to his skull. ‘Fitz,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Just do it.’
His knotty hands found the table’s edge and gripped it. I did not rip the shirt free, but I peeled it away from him, ignoring the sounds he made. At one point he hammered on the stone table with his fist, then yelped at that pain and dropped his fist to his lap and his brow to the table. ‘It’s done,’ I told him as I rolled the lifted shirt across his shoulders and let it drape there.
‘How bad are they?’
I pulled a branch of candles closer and studied his back. So thin. The bones of his spine were a row of hummocks down his back. The wounds gaped bloodlessly at me. ‘They’re clean, but open. We want to keep them open so that they heal from the inside out. Brace yourself again.’ He kept silent as I wiped each injury with the lavender oil. When I added the bear grease with garlic, the scents did not blend well. I held my breath. When each had been tended, I put a clean cloth over his back, trusting the grease to hold it in place. ‘There’s a clean shirt here,’ I said. ‘Try not to displace the dressing as you put it on.’
I walked to the other end of the room. His injuries had spotted his bedding with blood and fluid. I would leave a note asking Ash to bring fresh linens. Then I wondered if the boy could read, and decided it was likely so. Even if his mother had not demanded it of him for her business, Chade would have immediately set him to learning. For now, I turned his pillows and tugged the bedding straight.
‘Fitz?’ he called from the worktable.
‘I’m here. Just straightening your bedding.’
‘You’d have made a fine valet.’
