Fool’s Quest

“Don’t remind me of my years,” he told me, and then sat down with a sigh. “It’s unfair of you to prate of passing time when it seems to touch you not at all. Tip your hat a bit more to the back. That’s it. Before you go, we’ll redden your nose a little and give you higher color in your cheeks so it will appear you’ve begun your drinking early. And we’ll thicken your brows.” He tilted his head to consider me critically. “That should be enough to keep anyone from recognizing you. What’s this?” he demanded, pulling Bee’s parcel toward him.

“Something that I’d like to dispatch immediately to Withywoods. Things for Bee. I had to leave her quite abruptly, in a very peculiar way. It’s the first Winterfest since her mother died. I’d hoped to be there with her.”

“It will be on its way within the day,” he promised me gravely. “I sent a small troop of guards there this morning. If I’d known you had a message, I would have sent it with them. They’ll travel swiftly.”

“It has little gifts for her from the market. For a late Winterfest surprise. Wait, you sent a troop of guards? Why?”

“Fitz, where are your wits? You left Shun and FitzVigilant there, unprotected. You haven’t even door guards. Luckily I’ve one or two fellows about the place who know their business. Not much muscle among them, but keen eyes. They’ll warn Lant if they see anything threatening. And weather permitting, my troop will be there in three days or so. They’re a rough band, but I’ve seen that their commander is bringing them around. Captain Stout keeps them on a taut leash, until he lets them loose. And then nothing stops them.” He sounded very satisfied with his choice. He drummed his fingers on the table edge. “The daily bird hasn’t arrived, but sometimes that happens when the weather is foul.”

“Daily bird?”

“Fitz, I am a thorough man. I watch over my own. That includes you, for all your years there. And now, when a messageless bird arrives, I know that all is well for Lant and Shun as well. It’s only sensible.”

I’d known he had at least one watcher in place at Withywoods. I hadn’t realized that a daily report was sent to him. Well, not a report. A bird with no message meant all was well. “Chade, I’m ashamed that I gave no thought to the safety of Shun and FitzVigilant when I brought the Fool here. You entrusted them to me. It was a dire situation: I’m afraid it drove all other thoughts out of my head.”

He was nodding as I spoke, his face grave and his mouth without expression. I’d disappointed him. He cleared his throat and very deliberately shifted the topic. “So. Do you think you can masquerade as Lord Feldspar for an evening or three? It would be very handy for me to have a man mingling with the crowd who knew how to listen and how to steer a conversation.”

“I think I can still do that.” I felt abashed at failing him. This was the least I could do. “What were you hoping to discover?”

“Oh, the usual. Anything interesting. Who is trying to make deals out of sight of the crown? Who has been offering bribes to get better trading terms; who has been taking bribes? What is the general feeling about placating the dragons? Of course, the most valuable information you can discover would be any little facts that we aren’t expecting.”

“Do I have any specific targets?”

“Five. No, six, perhaps.” He scratched his ear. “I trust you to find a trail and follow it. I’ll make some suggestions, but keep your ears open for any interesting propositions.”

And for the next few hours he educated me in the various seesaws of power currently in play in the Six Duchies. He described each of the four men and two women that he wished me to spy upon, right down to their preferences for drink, which ones used smoke, and the two who were rumored to be meeting behind their spouses’ backs. Chade gave me a swift tutoring on copper mining so that I could at least appear knowledgeable, and advised me to maintain a crafty silence should anyone ask me detailed questions about my operations or the new vein of ore we had reportedly discovered.

And for a time, I put my life back in the old man’s hands. It would not be fair to say that I forgot my grief at losing Molly or stopped worrying about Bee or resigned myself to the Fool’s declining health. What I did was step outside of my real life and step back into one in which all I had to do was obey Chade’s directives and report back to him what I had learned. There was deep comfort in that. It was almost healing to discover that despite all I had been through, all my losses and all my daily fears and worries, I was still Fitz and this was something I was still very good at.

When he had finished schooling me for my task, he tilted his head toward the Fool’s bed. “How is he?”

“Not himself. In pain and emotionally frail. I upset him and he went back to his bed. And immediately fell asleep.”