by Robin Hobb
‘Well, for one thing, it will make it much easier to explain why you are chosen to accompany the Prince to the Outislands in spring. You’ll be one of the lucky ones whose lot is chosen for the honour. But mostly because the Witted have asked that, as a token that we mean them no harm, Prince Dutiful ride out as part of their escort.’
I was instantly distracted. ‘Do you think that’s safe? It could be a trap to lure him into danger.’
He smiled grimly. ‘Why do you think I want you riding at his heels? Of course, it’s possible it’s a trap. But the Witted must fear the same thing, must they not? So they ask for him, knowing that we would not risk the sole Farseer heir if there were any chance of a skirmish.’
‘Old Blood,’ I told him. ‘You must learn to say “Old Blood” not “Witted”. Then you’ll send him out to escort them in?’
Chade scowled and admitted, ‘He has little choice in that, as little as I do. The Queen has already promised it to them.’
‘In spite of your disapproval.’
Chade gave a snort of disdain. ‘My approval or disapproval means little to the Queen these days. She thinks, perhaps, that she has outgrown her need for me as a councillor. Well. We shall see.’
I could think of nothing to say to that. Truth to tell, and though it cost me a pang of disloyalty, I secretly rejoiced in my queen’s assertion of her strength.
The days to come were so full that the tensions of them almost crowded from my mind my concerns for the Fool. Despite the fragility of my health, Chade, Thick, Dutiful and I began to meet every morning in the Seawatch Tower. The Fool was not included in our meetings. Chade made no comment on this; given what I had told him, perhaps he viewed it as more desirable that the Fool not be a part of our coterie. I never brought the topic up. Only we four gathered, and there we pursued the Skill with an avidity that frightened me and enthused the rest of them. We made progress, careful and controlled progress that satisfied no one except me. Thick learned to confine his music, though it seemed to distress him in a way he could not explain. Dutiful became better at directing his Skill-messages to individuals. Chade, as was to be expected, lagged behind the other two pupils. If we were physically touching, he could reach my mind faintly, and I his. Thick could direct an onslaught at him that would catch his attention but convey nothing. Dutiful could not seem to find him. Or Chade couldn’t be aware of him. I could not tell which problem it was so we worked on both. The mornings were exhausting and nerve-wracking. I still got headaches, though they did not compare to the ones that had previously afflicted me.
Under Chade’s strict directions, I ate a nourishing meal of bland and healthful food every noon. I might have taken control of his Skill-magic, but he still remained my mentor and believed he knew best where my physical health was concerned. It was at this time that he confronted me about the elfbark and carryme that he had found and removed from my room when I was recovering from my ‘healing’. It was a sharp quarrel between us, and uncomfortable for us both. He maintained that I had a duty not to do anything that might injure or inhibit my Skill, especially now that I was Skillmaster to the Prince and his coterie. I maintained that I had a right to the privacy of my possessions. Neither of us either conceded or apologized. It simply became an area we avoided discussing.
Lord Golden had dismissed me from his service shortly after Chade had suggested he might. I was offered employment with the Queen’s Guard and accepted it with alacrity. They accepted me into their midst with an equanimity that surprised me. Evidently I was not the first odd man that Chade had slipped into theirl ranks. I wondered how many of them were more than what they seemed. They asked me few questions, but measured me instead with their routine drills and practices. Early afternoons I spent with the Queen’s Guard on the practice grounds. I was often found it lacking, and wore the bruises to show for it.
Ostensibly, I had a bunk in the barracks with the rest of the guards but as often I slept in my workroom. If anyone wondered at my oddly loose attachment to the Queen’s Guard, no one commented on it to me. When I encountered Wim at the practice court, he congratulated me on ‘being an honest fighter again’. In dress, I went back to the plain blue of a Buck guardsman, with a purple and white tunic for the times when I must show myself as belonging to the Queen. I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from openly wearing her fox badge on my breast. It matched the fox pin I wore within my shirt and above my heart.
I seemed to weary more swiftly and heal much more slowly than I ever had before, but despite Chade’s suggestions I did not attempt to use the Skill to speed that process. Late afternoons, while Chade was busy with diplomacy, Thick raided the kitchens for me. Together we gorged ourselves on sweets and rich pastries and fat meat. We discovered that Gilly loved raisins as much as Thick did. The ferret’s pleading dance for them could reduce Thick to tears of laughter. We all began to put on flesh, Thick probably more than was good for him. He became as round and his hair as glossy as a noble lady’s fat little lapdog. Blessed now with food, care and acceptance, a placid and sweet nature sometimes showed in the little man. I enjoyed those simple hours with him.
I even managed several evenings with Hap. We did not go to the Stuck Pig, but to a quiet alehouse, relatively new, called the Wrecked Red Ship. There we ate cheap and greasy tavern food and talked like the old friends we were becoming. It reminded me of my days with Burrich in the time just before Regal killed me. We recognized one another as men now. On our best evening, he regaled me with a long account of how Starling had swept into the woodshop, dazzled Master Gindast with her charm and fame, and carried him off for a day in Buckkeep Town. ‘It was so strange, Tom,’ he told me in a sort of wonder. ‘She behaved as if there had never been any quarrel nor hard words between us. And so what could I do, save do the same? Do you think she has actually forgotten what she said to me?’
‘I doubt she has forgotten,’ I told him thoughtfully. ‘A forgetful minstrel soon starves to death. No. With Starling, I think she believes that if she pretends hard enough that something is so, it becomes so. And, as you have seen, sometimes it works for her. Have you forgiven her, then?’
He looked nonplussed for a moment. Then, with a wry grin, he asked, ‘Would she notice if I hadn’t? She was so adept at persuading Gindast that she was all but a mother to me that I was half-convinced myself.’
I had to laugh and shrug to that. Starling had taken him to an inn frequented by travelling minstrels and there introduced to a number of musical young ladies. They had fed him mincemeat pastries and filled him up with ale and their songs, vying for his attention. I warned him facetiously about the soft and easy ways of minstrels and their stony hearts. It was a mistake. ‘I’ve no heart left to give to any girl,’ he informed me soberly. Nonetheless, from his descriptions of several of them, it seemed to me that even if he did not have the heart, he still had an eye for them. And so I silently blessed Starling and prayed for a swift healing for my lad.
Both the Fool and Lord Golden assiduously avoided me. On several evenings when I quietly descended from the workroom to enter Lord Golden’s apartments through my old bedroom, I found him not at home. Dutiful told me that he gained more frequently now, in Buckkeep Town where such amusements were gaining popularity as well as at private parties in the keep. I missed him, but also dreaded confronting him eventually. I did not want him to read in my eyes that I had betrayed him to Chade. It was for his own good, I excused myself. Dragons be damned. If simply keeping him away from Aslevjal would keep him alive, then his displeasure would be a small cost. That was what I told myself at the times when I found myself believing his wild prophecies. At other times, I was sure there was no frozen dragon and no Pale Woman and hence no reason for him to go to Aslevjal at all. And thus I justified it that I plotted with Chade against him. As for why he avoided me, I suspected he harboured some odd sense of shame about the tattoos that I now knew he bore. I knew I could not demand his company, nor force mine upon him. I could only hope that as days pass
ed, the healing rift between us would further close.
And so the days ticked by.
I would not have admitted it to anyone, but my newfound dread of the Prince’s quest to Aslevjal Island was behind my renewed dedication to teaching him to Skill. No matter how I counted the days to our spring sailing, there were never enough of them. I now concurred with Chade that the Prince must have a coterie, one with at least a basic working knowledge of their magic. And so I applied myself to developing our Skill-talents, with varying degrees of success. Chade’s Skill-level slowly increased at our morning lessons. He was very dissatisfied with his progress, and that made it more difficult for him to focus. I could not get him to relax, no matter how I tried to force him into a calm and empty state. Dutiful seemed to find my arguments with my elderly student amusing while Thick was elaborately bored by them. Neither attitude helped Chade to be less irascible with me. My kindly and patient teacher, I discovered, was a terrible student, headstrong and insubordinate. Finally I succeeded in opening him to the Skill after four days of unrelenting effort. At his first awareness of the Skill-current, he rushed headlong into it. I had no choice but to go after him. Sternly forbidding Dutiful and Thick to follow, I plunged into the Skill.
I do not like to recall that mishap. It was not just that Chade that was unfurling in the Skill. It was that there was so much of him to unfurl. Every moment of all his years of life streamed away from him. After struggling for a time to gather him in, I realized that the Skill was not shredding him. Rather, the old man was sending seeking threads of himself. Like the roots of a thirsty plant, he spread himself in every direction, heedless of the way the Skill-current tore and scattered his filaments. Even as I gathered the bits of him, he was glorying in the wild rush of connection. At length I tore him from the cataract of the Skill, powered as much by my great anger as by any magic. When at last we came back to my bodies, I found mine under the great table, trembling and twitching at the edge of a convulsion.
‘You stupid, stubborn old bastard!’ I gasped at him. I had not the strength to shout. Cbade himself was sprawled in his chair. As his eyelids fluttered and he came to awareness of himself, he muttered only, ‘Magnificent. Magnificent.’ And then he dropped his head down onto the table and sank into a deathly sound sleep from which there was no rousing him.
Dutiful and Thick hauled me out from under the table and back into my chair. Dutiful poured me a brimming glass of wine with shaking hands while Thick stood regarding me with his round little eyes very wide. When I had drunk half the wine, Dutiful said in an abashed voice, ‘That was the most frightening thing I’ve ever witnessed. Was that what it was like when you came in after me?’
I was too shaken and angry with both Chade and myself to admit to the Prince that I didn’t know. ‘Let it be a lesson to the both of you as well,’ I scolded. ‘Any one of us who commits such a foolish act risks all of us. Well do I understand now why the Skillmasters of old might put a pain barrier between the Skill and a wilful student.I
The Prince looked shocked. ‘You would not do such a thing to Lord Chade?’ His tone was as if I had proposed clapping the Queen in irons for her own good.
‘No, I admitted grudgingly. I rose shakily and circled the table. I nudged the snoring old man, and then prodded him. His eyes opened to slits. He smiled at me, head still on the table. ‘Ah. There you are, my boy.I His smile grew fatuously wider. ‘Did you see me? Did you see me fly?’ And then, I was not sure if his eyes rolled up or his lids closed, but he was gone again, as exhausted as a child after a day at a fair. I despaired that he seemed to have carried away no sensation at all of tragedy narrowly averted. It was an hour before he awoke, and then, for all his apologies, there was a gleam in his eye that filled me with trepidation. Even after he promised me to make no wild experiments on his own, I privately impressed on Thick that if he sensed Chade Skilling, he must contact me at once. Thick’s earnest assent was a bare comfort to me; such promises did not usually stay long in his mind.
The next morning was to bring me no greater serenity. Exhorting Chade to do nothing this time, save witness as best he could, I attempted to guide Dutiful in borrowing Thick’s strength to increase his own use of the Skill. Although they all had experienced in my healing what their joined strength could do, none of the three could really explain how they had tapped it or what had happened. It seemed to me that Dutiful at least needed to be able to reliably draw on Thick’s power. So I set them a simple exercise, or so I thought.
Alone, Dutiful could reach Chade’s mind only as the barest whisper. He could make Chade aware of his efforts, but not of the message he sought to convey. I was not sure if this indicated that Chade was still too closed to the Skill, or if Dutiful could not sufficiently target him. I wanted to see if by tapping Thick’s strength, Dutiful could make Chade hear him. ‘Prince Verity told me that a coterie member or solo used in such a fashion was referred to as a King’s Man. So. Thick will be serving as King’s Man to Dutiful. Shall we try this?’ I asked them.
‘He’s the Prince. Not a king,’ Thick interrupted anxiously.
‘Yes. And?’
‘Can’t be a King’s Man then. It won’t work.’
I found my patience. ‘It’s all right, Thick. It will work. You will be serving as a Prince’s Man.’
‘Serving. Like a servant?I He was instantly affronted.
‘No. Helping. Like a friend. Thick will be helping Dutiful as a Prince’s Man. Shall we try this?’
Dutiful was grinning, but it did not mock his man. Thick turned to him, caught the grin from him and settled himself next to the Prince. ‘It should be easy for both of you,’ I suggested. I didn’t know if I lied or not. ‘Thick must simply be open to the Skill, but not making any effort. Dutiful should draw strength from him and use the Skill to try to reach Chade. Dutiful. Go slowly. And if I tell you to stop, you must break the contact immediately. Now. Begin.’
I thought I had planned for every possibility. I had sweet foods such as Thick loved and brandy if we needed a restorative. Both waited on the table. I wondered now if that had been a bad idea. Thick’s eyes kept wandering to some current buns. Would they distract him too much from his Skilling? I had wanted to have elfbark and hot water ready as well, but Chade had sternly over-ruled me. ‘Far better if the Prince’s coterie is never exposed to such a destructive drug,’ he opined righteously. I didn’t remind him that he had taught me the use of it.
I hovered anxiously behind the Prince as he set his hand upon Thick’s shoulder. If it appeared he were draining the little man, I was prepared to physically break the link between them. Well did I know that a Skill-user could deliberately kill that way. I wanted no tragic accidents.
We waited. After a time, I gave Chade a significant look. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Begin,’ I suggested to the two of them.
I’m trying,’ said Dutiful in exasperation. ‘I can Skill to Thick. But I don’t know how to draw his strength off and use it.’
‘Hmm. Thick, can you help him?’ I suggested.
Thick opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘How?’ he asked.
I didn’t know. ‘Just be open to him. Think of sending him your strength.’
Again, they settled. I watched Chade’s face, hoping for some sign that Dutiful had touched minds with him. But after a short time, Dutiful lifted his eyes to mine. His mouth twisted in a small smile. ‘He’s Skilling “strength, strength, strength” to me,’ he confided.
‘You said to!’ Thick protested angrily.
‘Yes. So I did,’ I assured him. ‘Calm down, Thick. No one is mocking you.’
He glared at me, breathing through his nose. Dogstink.
Dutiful flinched. Chade’s lips twitched but he managed no to smile. ‘Dog stink. Is that the message you wished to convey to me?’
‘I believe Thick intended that comment for me,’ I said carefully.
‘But it went through me to Chade, my target. I felt it,’ Dutiful said excitedly.
‘Can I have a bun now?’
‘No, Thick. Not yet. We all need to work on this.’ I pondered a moment. Dutiful had directed Thick’s Skill. Did that mean he had actually taken strength from Thick to break through to Chade, or that he had simply diverted Thick’s message intended for me to Chade?
I didn’t know. I didn’t think there was any way I could be absolutely certain of what had happened. ‘Try it together,’ I suggested. ‘Both of you attempt to send the same message to Chade, and only Chade. Try to make a concerted effort.’
‘Concerted?’
‘Do it together,’ Dutiful supplied to Thick. There was a moment of silent conference between the two. I suspected they chose a message. ‘Now,’ I suggested and watched Chade’s face.
He furrowed his brow. ‘Something about a bun.’
Dutiful gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Yes, but that wasn’t what we were supposed to be conveying. Thick is having a bit of difficulty concentrating.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘No, you aren’t. You just want to eat,’ Dutiful told him. Which put Thick into a sulk. No amount of prodding or persuasion would induce him to try again. We eventually allowed him the food and resolved to take a lesson from it on the morrow.
Yet the next morning we seemed doomed to have as little luck as before. Spring was in the air. I had thrown the window shutters open wide to the dawn. As yet, the sun was only a promise on the horizon, but the wind off the ocean had a lively and freshened air to it that spoke of life and change in the seasons. I stood breathing it in for a long time while I waited for the others to arrive.
I was no more at ease in conscience over what I had planned against Lord Golden. I had begun to wish I had not divulged that conversation to Chade, nor told him of the Fool’s tattoos. Surely if he had wished Chade to know of them, he would have told him during the course of their conversation about the Narcheska’s tattoos. I had a deep and profound sense of having made a wrong choice. There was no way to undo it, and confessing it to the Fool seemed unimaginable. The only thing more unimaginable was to allow him to go to Aslevjal if he believed he would die there. So, childish though it felt, I had decided that I would simply hold my tongue and leave the matter in Chade’s hands. He would be the one who would not allow Lord Golden to accompany us. I drew another deep breath of spring air, hoping it would make me feel rejuvenated. Instead, I only felt more deeply anxious.