by Robin Hobb
‘What happened?’ His face was white with terror. His voice seemed a whisper.
‘A firepot brought the ceiling down. And Bee can Skill. Strongly. That was her you felt! But she doesn’t know how to target. She frightened off a patrol. But when they come to their senses, if they do, they’ll know where we are.’
‘I’m so sorry, Fitz!’ Prilkop was showing me the bricked-up entrance. ‘I told her to stay close.’ He had my arm and dragged me in.
‘My father needed me,’ Bee explained.
‘Bee made them run away?’ Per asked. He let Spark slide to the floor as he slammed the door shut behind us. We stood in the stillness of the guard’s chamber. My ears were still ringing.
‘Spark?’ Lant cried, his heart in his voice as his wits returned to him. He knelt by her, crying, ‘Where is she hurt?’
‘She is Skill-stunned. I think she’ll come around in a few minutes. Bee, no one is angry. You saved our lives. Come here, please, come here!’
Per was ignoring the rest of us as he pushed the guard’s table against the door. I dodged the chair he flung at it to hobble toward Bee.
She had retreated to a corner of the room, both her hands lifted to cover her shamed face. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her! And now they know where we are hiding!’
‘No, you saved us! You saved all of us!’
She darted to me, and for a fleeting instant I held my child in my arms and she clung to me, believing I could protect her. For a breath, I felt like a good father. The Fool came up the steps. ‘What happened?’ he demanded.
‘Down the steps,’ Lant commanded. He had dragged a dazed Spark to her feet. Her eyes were open and she looked confused. A good sign, I decided.
Bits of paint were already flaking down as the cracks in the ceiling above us ran and widened. ‘If the ceiling comes down, we’re trapped down there,’ I reminded him.
‘Even if the ceiling fall hadn’t blocked the corridor out there, we haven’t any hope of getting out past the guards and gates. This is our only chance, small as it is. Come on.’
I do not like this.
Nor I.
The Fool came to help me follow them. Lant went through with Spark holding tight to his arm. Per put a last chair in his stack of furniture and came to join us.
‘You have magic?’ Per asked Bee as she held the door for us.
‘And you do not. I am so glad. I would have made you run away from us.’ For just an instant, a smile crossed her face. It was Molly’s smile in that little scarred face. My heart broke.
‘Never,’ the boy promised her, and his grin was wide. It was all she saw.
Behind me, a corner of the ceiling came down, smoking and stinking and effectively blocking the outer door. I felt a wash of heat with it, pushing Bee and me toward the steps. Per closed the door behind us. ‘Well. I doubt we need to fear any enemies coming at us from that direction.’ He sounded almost cheerful. I said nothing to contradict him, but I knew that smouldering wood would catch the walls on fire. We were truly trapped now.
Bee and Per descended before us. I looked down the steps. ‘Lean on me,’ the Fool bade me. At every step, the gash on my thigh gaped. There was light below, but not much. I caught a whiff of fragrant pine oil before the prison stench drowned it. Then I felt an immense thud, as if a giant horse had kicked the wall, and the door jumped in its frame. I judged that more of the ceiling had come down. That was it. We were trapped and would die here if we did not find another escape route.
‘No going back,’ the Fool said. I nodded numbly. We reached the bottom and I sat down on the lowest step. The Fool sat down beside me and Bee came to my other side. Here we were. All of us alive. For now.
I put my arm around her and drew her close. For an instant, she stiffened at my touch. Then she leaned into me. For a time, I just sat there. My strength was at a low ebb, but Bee was here. My child was beside me.
Above us, fire and falling walls and a furious enemy. Down here, chill and dank and dimness. We were caged in by stone and sea. Prilkop crouched beside the prisoners he had freed. They sat together in one cell, ragged and round-shouldered, huddled close on a single pallet. I could not hear what he was saying to them. Across the room, a shaky Spark inspected a section of the wall. I watched her and Lant run their hands over the stonework, rub at the scratched mortar and shake their heads. They looked discouraged.
‘We may have to use a firepot,’ Lant suggested.
Spark rubbed her eyes and gingerly shook her head. ‘Last resort,’ she said loudly. ‘Unless we could put it inside the wall more of the force would come at us than into the stone. Chade and I did many tests. If we buried the pot, it blasted a hole. On top of the ground it made a wide, shallow indentation. It could as easily bring the ceiling down on us.’
‘I’m so tired,’ Bee said. I could barely hear her.
‘So am I.’ The carris seed had already faded leaving its darkness and weariness.
‘Wolf Father is with you now?’
Yes.
‘Yes.’ Her name for Nighteyes made me smile at her.
‘What is he?’
I didn’t know. ‘He’s good,’ I said. I sensed approval from him.
‘He is,’ she agreed. She waited for me to say more. I shrugged at her, and a smile flickered across her face. Then she asked, ‘Are we safe here?’
‘Safe enough. For now,’ I told her.
I studied her face. Her eyes widened. Almost defiantly, she said, ‘I know what I look like. I’m not pretty any more.’
‘You never were,’ I told her. I shook my head at her.
The Fool gasped at my cruelty and Bee’s eyes went wide in shock.
‘You were and are beautiful,’ I said. I freed a hand to touch her lumpy ear. ‘Every scar a victory. I see you had many of them.’
She straightened her back. ‘Every time they beat me, I tried to hurt them back. Wolf Father told me that. Make them fear me, he said. So I did. I bit a hole in Dwalia’s face.’
That shocked me to silence. But the Fool leaned in and said, ‘Oh, well done! Would that I could have done that myself.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you like your father’s nose?’
She looked up at me and I fingered the break in it. She had never seen it any other way. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she asked in puzzlement.
‘Nothing at all,’ the Fool told her merrily. ‘I’ve always told people, “There’s nothing wrong with his nose.’’’ He laughed out loud, and both Lant and Spark turned to regard us in surprise. I didn’t understand his joke, but their expressions made me laugh and even Bee smiled, in the way one does at a madman.
She leaned closer and closed her eyes. The pain from my leg came in surges with my heartbeat. Rest, rest, rest said the pain. I knew I could not. My body wanted to sleep, to heal, but now was not the time. I needed to get up, to help the others, but Bee was slumped against me and I didn’t want to move her. I leaned back and the last firepot in the belt poked me. ‘Help me,’ I said and the Fool tugged it off me.
Bee didn’t stir. I looked down at her little face. Her eyes were closed. Her disfigurement told a dreadful tale. Scars, some months old, some fresh, distorted her face. I wanted to touch the cut at the corner of her mouth and heal it. No. Don’t wake her. I realized I was leaning heavily on the Fool. I lifted my head to look at him.
‘Did we win?’ he asked me. His smile was lopsided in his swollen face.
‘The fight isn’t over until you win,’ I said. Burrich’s words. Spoken to me so long ago. I touched my leg. Warm and wet. I was hungry and thirsty and so tired. But I had them both beside me. Alive. Still bleeding, and my ears ringing. But alive.
Across the room, Lant was grinding at mortar with his knife. Per knelt on the floor beside him, likewise digging at a seam. Spark had crossed to a rack of tools meant for tearing flesh, not stone. Her upper lip curled back as she selected one of the black iron implements. I turned my gaze away from that and met the Fool’s eyes.
‘I should go help t
hem,’ he said.
‘Not yet.’
He gave me a questioning look.
‘Let me have this moment. All of you here with me. Just for a short time.’ A smile suddenly came to me. ‘I have news for you,’ I told him. I found I still could grin. ‘Fool, I’m a grandfather! Nettle has a baby girl now. Hope! Isn’t that a wonderful name?’
‘You. A grandfather.’ He smiled with me. ‘Hope. A perfect name.’
For a time we sat together in silence. I was so weary, and danger still threatened, but that did not steal the sweetness of being here, alive, with them. I was so tired. And my leg hurt. Nonetheless, I had this moment. I slipped into the wolf’s enjoyment of the immediate.
Rest a moment. I will keep watch.
I didn’t realize I had dozed until I twitched awake. I was thirsty and ravenously hungry. Bee was holding my hand and was asleep against me. Skin to skin, I felt my daughter as a part of me. I smiled slowly as I became aware of her Skill-wall. Self-taught. She would be strong with it. I lifted my eyes to the Fool. He was haggard but smiling. ‘Still here,’ he said softly.
Through the dimness, I saw that Lant had taken off his shirt and was sweating in the chill. He, Per and Spark were employing our looted swords to dig out the mortar in a section of wall. They had made an opening big enough to admit a man’s arm. The stone they had pulled out was as long and wide as a man’s forearm but only a hand tall. The blocks in the wall were staggered. They’d have to remove three above to take out the two below. At least six to move before Per could squeeze through. I should go and help. I knew that. But my body had cheerily burned my reserves to try to heal my leg. I cautiously felt the bandaging. Sticky and crusty. No new blood. Still likely to split open again when next I stood.
Lant stood up. ‘Stand back,’ he said and when Per and Spark did he kicked at the block they’d been working on. ‘Not yet,’ Spark said wearily. Per went back to his scraping.
‘Can’t we put one of your firepots in there now?’
Spark gave him a look. ‘If you want to chance caving in the tunnel beyond, I suppose we could.’
Per made a small sound of amusement and went on scraping at mortar.
The Fool and I were silent. One of the prisoners came out of the cell. He stumbled slowly toward where Per, Spark and Lant scraped at the mortar. He spoke hoarsely, in a boy’s voice. ‘I will help, if you have a tool for me.’ Spark measured him with her eyes, then she gave him her belt-knife, and he began to dig feebly at a line of mortar.
‘I truly feared I had to choose between you,’ the Fool said quietly. When I said nothing, he added, ‘Her dream of the buck, the bee, and the scale.’
‘And yet I am here, and alive, and our enemies are walled away from us by smouldering rubble. Perhaps I am still the Catalyst, and can change even her predictions of what must be. I am not dead yet and I don’t intend to die. I am taking Bee home, to Buckkeep. She will be raised as a princess, and you will be at her side to teach and advise her. Her sister will adore her and she will have a little niece to play with.’
Two of the freed Whites rose and went to the rack of torture tools. They made choices and then joined Lant, Spark and Per, chipping away at the mortar. The irony twisted my gut.
‘And we will live happily ever after?’ the Fool asked.
I watched the bits of mortar fall. ‘That is my intention.’
‘And mine. My hope. But a thin one.’
‘Don’t doubt us, or we are lost.’
‘Fitz, my love, that is the problem. I do not doubt Bee’s dreams at all.’
I opened my mouth and then found wisdom. I closed it. But as a dreadful thought came to me, I asked him, ‘The container of Silver you took from the stateroom. Did the Servants get it?’
‘I stole it to keep a promise,’ he admitted. ‘What did you think? That I’d taken it to use on myself?’
‘I feared that.’
‘No. I didn’t even bring it with me. I told Boy-O—’
Beside me, Bee stirred. She lifted her head and took her hand out of mine. The Skill-link held, stretched thin as a thread but still there. I wondered if she felt it. She drew in a deep breath and sighed it out. She looked from me to the Fool. He smiled at her as I’d never seen him smile at anyone. His scars stretched with it, but his half-blind eyes shone with tenderness. She stared back at him and leaned tighter into me. As she looked at him, she whispered, ‘I had a dream.’
He lifted a gloved hand and stroked her hair. ‘Would you like to tell it to me?’ he offered.
She looked at me. I nodded. ‘I sit near a fire beside Da and a wolf. He is very old. He tells me stories and I write them down. But I am very sad as I do this. Everyone is mourning.’ She finished with, ‘I believe this dream is very likely.’ She turned worried eyes to me.
I smiled at her. ‘That dream sounds lovely to me. I would change only your sadness.’
She frowned at how little I understood. ‘Da. I don’t make the dreams. I can’t change them. They just come to me.’
I laughed. ‘I know. The same thing happens to the Fool. Sometimes he is very sure a dream will come true.’ I shrugged one shoulder and grinned at her. ‘And then I make it not true.’
‘You can do that?’ She was astonished.
‘He is my Catalyst. He changes things. Sometimes in ways I never imagined,’ the Fool admitted ruefully. ‘And often enough I have been grateful for him to do that. Bee, there is so much I must teach you. About Catalysts and dreams and—’
‘Prilkop told me that Dwalia was my Catalyst. She came and made changes in my life. She changed me. Thus she enabled the changes I made. And I killed her. I killed my Catalyst.’ She looked up at me. Her eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots, her pale curls matted to her head. ‘Did you know that I killed people? And I burned all the dreams so the Servants cannot use them for evil any more. Papa, I am the Destroyer.’ Her words left me speechless. In a very small voice, she asked, ‘Can you change that for me?’
‘You are Bee and you are my little girl,’ I told her fiercely. ‘That doesn’t change. Not ever.’
Bee turned her head sharply to something and I followed her gaze. Another prisoner was making her slow way toward us, her pale face pinched with pain as she limped on a welted foot. ‘In my dream, I saw you, little girl,’ she said. She smiled at us with chapped lips. ‘You were made of flame. You danced in the flames and brought war to where war had never been. With a sword of flame, you sliced the past from the present, and the present from the future.’
Prilkop started toward us, his face full of worry.
The White shuffled closer. ‘I am Cora, a collator. I studied in the scroll-library. I had a lovely little cottage. But I spilled ink on an old text. I knew I must be punished. But I also knew that one day I would go back to my ink and pens and fine vellum. To evenings of rest and wine and songs by moonlight.
‘But you came. And you destroyed it all. ‘She shrieked the last words and flung herself at Bee. Bee screamed in fury and fear, and stood to meet her. My knife clashed against Bee’s as they drove into the woman’s body at the same moment. She went down under our combined weight as I fell onto her. The Fool gave an incoherent cry over Per’s roar of rage. The killing wrath that rose in me obscured all else. Bee was fast. She withdrew her knife and sank it again before I could finish the woman. Cora bubbled a whine that became silence. We sprawled on the filthy floor, my hands slick with blood and my leg searing with pain. Bee rolled off the woman and struggled to rise. The blood on her clothes terrified me. She was not hurt, our Skill-thread assured me. She retrieved her knife and wiped it on Cora’s dirty trousers.
Prilkop reached us, crying, ‘Cora! Cora, what have you done?’ He tried to pull me off the White’s body, but I snarled at him and he drew back. Per darted in and pulled Bee to his side as Prilkop demanded, ‘Did you have to kill her? Did you really have to kill her?’
‘I did,’ Bee confirmed. Her eyes blazed at him. ‘Because I am going to live.’
&nb
sp; Per had hold of her upper arm and was staring at her with a mixture of awe and horror. I rolled off Cora’s body and tried to rise but could not. The wounded leg would not bend and my other leg was shaky. Lant came to us. ‘Step back,’ he warned Prilkop in a deadly voice and hauled me to my feet. I was grateful for his roughness. I wanted no gentleness now.
The Fool’s cry cut through the simmering tension. ‘Why?’
Prilkop spoke before I could open my mouth. ‘Why, indeed, did your Catalyst and his daughter murder Cora? You recall Cora, do you not? She smuggled messages for us.’
‘Cora,’ the Fool said quietly, and his face sagged and aged in that moment. ‘Yes,’ he said in a shaky voice. ‘I recall her.’
‘She attacked Bee!’ I reminded all.
‘She had no weapon!’ Prilkop objected.
‘We have no time!’ Lant shouted the words. ‘She is dead, as are many others. As we will all be dead, unless these stones come out. Prilkop! Come and work. Fool, you also. No time for recriminations or fond reunions. All of you come to the wall. Now!’
I looked down at Cora’s body and felt no regret. She had tried to kill my child. I tilted my head toward the nasty black knife that lay by her body. One of their torture tools. ‘There are tools for slicing human flesh on that rack near the table. Take what will work best on mortar.’ I nudged Cora’s knife feebly with my foot. ‘Here’s one for you, Prilkop.’
He gave me a stricken look and I almost regretted my words. But Bee stooped and took up Cora’s black knife. She carried it to the wall and began scraping the mortar around the lowest block. The Fool made to follow.
‘Fool. Will you help me?’
‘How bad is your leg?’
‘Not terrible. It’s worse that my body is sapping my energy to heal it.’
‘So the half-blind will lead the mostly lame?’
‘It’s supposed to be the other way round.’ I set my arm across his shoulders. ‘Watch your step,’ I warned him and steered him around Cora’s outflung arm.