Fool’s Assassin

FitzVigilant will take her back to Withywoods. Don’t worry, it will be all right. Please. Oh, how I hoped it would be all right. Fence that thought well with a tight Skill-wall! Send a cart and team to meet us at the Witness Stones, I repeated. Tell them my life depends on it. An exaggeration, but not much of one. Chade, at least, would understand. And Dutiful. I pulled my mind free of hers and put up my walls. I didn’t want to Skill right now. I wanted no distractions at all from keeping the Fool alive. I looked down at Bee and felt disloyal. This was supposed to have been our day together; well, it had been doomed from the start. She leaned on me, and I moved her shawl, tucking it more closely around her. We hadn’t bought half the things I’d intended to get for her. When I got back, I’d make it up to her. I’d make a raid on the markets at Buckkeep Town and bring her an armful of pretty things to make up for it. The Fool and I would return together, and it would be a Winterfest to remember for all of us.

The Fool groaned again and I turned to him. I leaned down and spoke softly. “We’re going through Skill-pillars, Fool. I’m taking you to Buckkeep Castle for the coterie to heal. But it will be easier for me to take you through if we are Skill-linked. So …”

I took his hand in mine. Years ago, in the course of tending King Verity, the Fool had accidentally brushed his fingers against Verity’s Skill-laden hands. The silver Skill had burned and soaked into his fingertips. His touch on my wrist had once left marks, silvery fingerprints, and a link between us. He had taken them back, right before I made my fateful trip through the Skill-pillars and back to Buckkeep. I intended to renew that link now, press his fingers to my wrist once more and gain, I planned, enough of a Skill-link to take him through the standing stones with Riddle and me.

But when I turned his hand to look at his fingers, horror and sickness rose in me. Where once silver had outlined the delicate whorls of his fingertips, gnarled scar tissue now deadened the ends of his fingers. His nails remained as thick and yellowed nubs, but the soft pads of his fingers were gone, replaced with coarse, dead flesh. “Who did all this to you? And why? Where have you been, Fool, and how could you let this happen to yourself?” And then, the ultimate question that had haunted me for years and now sounded louder than ever in my heart. “Why didn’t you send for me, send me a message, reach out somehow? I would have come. No matter what, I would have come.”

I scarcely expected an answer. He might not be losing blood, but the poisons I had released into his body were spreading. I’d stolen strength from him to seal the cuts I’d made. Whatever reserves he had left, he had best marshal against the poisons within. But he stirred slightly and then spoke.

“Those who had loved me … tried to destroy me.” He moved his blind eyes as if he tried to look into mine. “And you succeeded where they had failed. But I understand, Fitz. I understand. I deserved it.”

He fell silent. His words made no sense to me. “I did not mean to hurt you. I would never hurt you. I mistook you … I thought you meant her harm! Fool, I am sorry. So sorry! But who tormented you, who broke you?” I pondered what little I knew. “The school that raised you … they did this to you?”

I watched the slight rise and fall of his chest, and rebuked myself for asking him a question. “You don’t have to answer. Not now. Wait until we’ve healed you.” If we could. My hand was on his ragged shirt. I felt ribs beneath it, ribs knotted with old breaks badly healed. How could he be alive? How could he have come so far, blind and alone and crippled? Seeking his son? I should have tried much, much harder to find the boy, if the Fool’s need for him was so great. If only I’d known, had some inkling of how desperate a state he was in. I’d failed him. For now. But I’d help him. I would.

“Shame.” The single word rode an exhaled breath.

I bowed my head, thinking he’d read my thoughts and rebuked me. He spoke again, very softly. “Why I didn’t call on you for help. At first. Ashamed. Too shamed to ask for help. After all I did. To you. How often I plunged you into pain?” His gray tongue tried to moisten his peeling lips. I opened my mouth to speak, but he tightened his grip on my hand. He was gathering strength. I kept silent.