simply a thing that had to be, and would continue to be for several days, and possibly longer. He was not pleased. But neither was I. It rattled me not a little that he could be so clearly aware of how I spent my hours even if I had no conscious sense of being in touch with him. Had Verity been able to sense him?
He laughed at me. Hard enough to make you hear me sometimes. Should I batter through to you and then shout for him as well?
Our hunting success was small. Two rabbits, neither with much fat. I promised to bring him kitchen scraps on the morrow. I had even less success at conveying to him my demand for privacy at certain times: He could not grasp why I set mating apart from other pack activities such as hunting or howling. Mating suggested offspring in the near future, and offspring were the care of the pack. Words cannot convey the difficulties of that discussion. We conversed in images, in shared thoughts, and such do not allow for much discretion. His candor horrified me. He assured me he shared my delight in my mate and my mating. I begged him not to. Confusion. I finally left him eating his rabbits. He seemed piqued that I would not accept a share of the meat. The best I had been able to get from him was his understanding that I did not want to be aware of him sharing my awareness of Molly. That was scarcely what I wanted, but it was the best I could convey it to him. The idea that at times I would want to sever my bond to him completely was not a thought he could comprehend. It made no sense, he argued. It was not pack. I left him wondering if I would ever again really and truly have a moment to myself.
I returned to the Keep and sought the solitude of my own room. If only for a moment, I had to be where I could close the door behind me and be alone. Physically, anyway. As if to fuel my quest for quiet, the halls and stairways were full of hurrying folk. Servants were cleaning away old rushes and spreading new ones, fresh candles were being placed in holders, and boughs of evergreen were hung in festoons and swags everywhere. Winterfest. I didn't much feel like it.
I finally reached my own door and slipped inside. I shut it firmly behind me.
'Back so soon?' The Fool looked up from the hearth, where he crouched in a semicircle of scrolls. He seemed to be sorting them into groups.
I stared at him with unconcealed dismay. In an instant it flashed into anger. 'Why didn't you tell me of the King's condition?'
He considered another scroll, after a moment set it in the pile to his right. 'But I did. A question in exchange for yours: why didn't you already know of it?'
That set me back. 'I admit I've been lax in calling upon him. But—'
'None of my words could have had the impact of seeing for yourself. Nor do you pause to think what it would have been like had I not been there every single day, emptying chamber pots, sweeping, dusting, carrying out dishes, combing his hair and his beard…'
Again he had shocked me into silence. I crossed the room, sat down heavily atop my clothing chest. 'He's not the King I remember,' I said bluntly. 'It frightens me that he could sink so far, so fast.'
'Frightens you? Appalls me. At least you've another King when this one's been played.' The Fool flipped another scroll onto the pile.
'We all do,' I pointed out carefully.
'Some more than others,' the Fool said shortly.
Without thinking, my hand rose to tuck the pin tighter in my jerkin. I'd almost lost it today. It had made me think of all it had symbolized all these years. The King's protection, for a bastard grandson that a more ruthless man would have done away with quietly. And now that he needed protection? What did it symbolize to me now?
'So. What do we do?'
'You and I? Precious little. I'm but a Fool, and you are a bastard.'
I nodded grudgingly. 'I wish Chade were here. I wish I knew when he was coming back.' I looked to the Fool, wondering how much he knew…
'Shade? Shade returns when the sun does, I've heard.' Evasive as always. 'Too late for the King, I imagine,' he added more quietly.
'So we are powerless?'
'You and I? Never. We've too much power to act here; that is all. In this area, the powerless ones are always the most powerful. Perhaps you are right; they are who we should consult in this. And now…' Here he rose and made a show of shaking all his joints loose as if he were a marionette with tangled strings. He set every bell he had to jingling. I could not help but smile. 'My king will be coming into his best time of day. And I will be there, to do what little I can for him.'
He stepped carefully out of his ring of sorted scrolls and tablets. He yawned. 'Farewell, Fitz.'
'Farewell.'
He halted, puzzled, by the door. 'You have no objections to my going?'
'I believe I objected first to your staying.'
'Never bandy words with a Fool. But do you forget? I offered you a bargain. A secret for a secret.'
I had not forgotten. But I was not sure, suddenly, that I wanted to know. 'Whence comes the Fool, and why?' I asked softly.
'Ah.' He stood a moment, then asked gravely, 'You are certain you wish the answers to these questions?'
'Whence comes the Fool, and why?' I repeated slowly.
For an instant he was dumb. I saw him then. Saw him as I had not in years, not as the Fool, glib-tongued and wits as cutting as any barnacle, but as a small and slender person, all so fragile, pale flesh, bird-boned, even his hair seemed less substantial than that of other mortals. His motley of black and white trimmed in silver bells, his ridiculous rat scepter were all the armor and sword he had in this court of intrigues and treachery. And his mystery. The invisible cloak of his mystery. I wished for an instant he had not offered the bargain, and that my curiosity had been less consuming.
He sighed. He glanced about my room, then walked over to stand before the tapestry of King Wisdom greeting the Elderling. He glanced up at it, then smiled sourly, finding some humor there I had never seen. He assumed the stance of a poet about to recite. Then he halted, looked at me squarely once more. 'You are certain you wish to know, Fitzy-fitz?'
Like a liturgy, I repeated the question. 'Whence comes the Fool and why?'
'Whence? Ah, whence?' He went nose to nose with Ratsy for a moment, formulating a reply to his own question. Then he met my eyes. 'Go south, Fitz. To lands past the edges of every map that Verity has ever seen. And past the edges of the maps made in those countries as well. Go south, and then east across a sea you have no name for. Eventually, you would come to a long peninsula, and on its snaking tip you would find the village where a Fool was born. You might even find, still, a mother who recalled her wormy-white babe, and how she cradled me against her warm breast and sang.' He glanced up at my incredulous, enraptured face and gave a short laugh. 'You cannot even picture it, can you? Let me make it harder for you. Her hair was long and dark and curling, and her eyes were green. Fancy that! Of such rich colors was this transparency made. And the fathers of the colorless child? Two cousins, for that was the custom of that land. One broad and swarthy and full of laughter, ruddy-lipped and brown-eyed, a farmer smelling of rich earth and open air. The other as narrow as the one was wide, and gold to his bronze, a poet and songster, blue-eyed. And, oh, how they loved me and rejoiced in me! All the three of them, and the village as well. I was so loved.' His voice grew soft, and for a moment he fell silent. I knew with great certainty that I was hearing what no other had ever heard from him. I remembered the time I had ventured into his room, and the exquisite little doll in its cradle that I had found there. Cherished as the Fool had once been cherished. I waited.
'When I was… old enough, I bade them all farewell. I set off to find my place in history, and choose where I would thwart it. This was the place I selected; the time had been destined by the hour of my birth. I came here, and became Shrewd's. I gathered up whatever threads the fates put into my hands, and I began to twist them and color them as I could, in the hopes of affecting what was woven after me.'
I shook my head. 'I don't understand a thing you just said.'
'Ah.' He shook his head, setting his bells to jingling. 'I offered to tell you my secret. I didn't promise to make you understand it.'
'A message is not delivered until it is understood,' I countered. This was a direct quote from Chade.
The Fool teetered on accepting it. 'You do understand what I said,' he compromised. 'You simply do not
