Fool’s Quest

I led Chade past my splintered doors. His face grew grimmer as we passed a sword-scored wall and a slashed tapestry. We entered my study and I shut the door. For a moment, Chade just looked at me. Then he asked, “How could you have let this happen? I told you I needed her protected. I told you that. I’ve suggested, over and over, that you have a few house-soldiers or at least a Skilled apprentice here who could have summoned help. You’ve always been so stubborn, so insistent that you must have everything your way. Now look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done.” His voice trailed and broke on the last words. He staggered to my desk and sat down in my chair. He bowed his face into his hands. I was so stunned by his rebuke that it took me a short time to realize he was weeping.

I had no words to offer in my own defense. It was true. Both he and Riddle had urged me to have some sort of guard, but I’d always refused, believing that I’d left violence behind me at Buckkeep Castle. Believing I could always protect my own. Until I’d left them all without a thought to save the Fool.

He lifted his face from his hands. He looked so old. “Say something!” he ordered me harshly. Tears were wet in the lines of his cheeks.

I bit back the first words that came to my mind. I would not utter another useless apology. “The minds of everyone here have been fogged. I don’t know how it was done, nor how a Skill-suggestion lingers to turn folk away and make them discouraged. I don’t know if it is even the Skill or a different magic used against us. But no one here recalls an attack, even though the evidence is plain throughout the house. The only one who seems to have clear memory of Winterfest eve is a stable boy named Perseverance.”

“I need to talk to him,” Chade interrupted me.

“I sent him to the steams. He took an arrow through the shoulder. And he has been rattled badly by days spent with folk who no longer recall him and treat him as if he were mad.”

“I care nothing for that!” he shouted. “I want to know what has become of my daughter!”

“Daughter?” I stared at him. Anger burned in his eyes. I thought of Shun, her Farseer features, even her green eyes. So obvious. How could I not have seen it before?

“Of course, my daughter! Why else would I go to such lengths? Why else would I have sent her here, to you, to the one person who I thought I could trust to keep her safe? Only to have you abandon her. I know who did this! Her damned mother and her brothers, but worst of all her stepfather! They’ve the family feeling of snakes! For years I paid Shun’s family, and paid them well, to care for her. But it was never enough for them. Never. They always wanted more—more money, honors at court, grants of land, more than I could possibly give them. Her mother never had any feelings for the child! And once the grandparents were gone, her mother began to threaten her. Her pig of a husband, trying to put his hands on Shun when she was little more than a girl! Then when I removed Shun, and cut off the money, they tried to kill her!” He sputtered to a halt. There was a tap on the door. He brushed his cuff over his eyes and composed his face.

“Enter,” I called, and Tavia came in to announce that there was hot food and drink waiting for us. Even in her deadened state, she seemed to sense the tension in the room, for she withdrew swiftly after her announcement. Chade stared at her bruised face; after she left, his gaze remained fixed on the door, his thoughts miles away. I spoke into the quiet that followed. “And you never saw fit to share any of that with me?”

He flung his attention back to me. “There was never a good time to talk with you! I no longer trust our Skilling to be private, and that first evening at the inn, when I needed to talk to you, you were in such a damnable hurry to leave—”

“To get home to my daughter, I might point out!” My guilt was giving way to my own anger. “Chade. Listen to me. This was not an attack by Shun’s family. Not unless they are capable of hiring Chalcedeans to do their dirty work. And have a stable full of white horses, and a troop of pale folk to ride them. I believe that whoever came here was actually in pursuit of the Fool. Or the messenger who preceded him.”

“A messenger preceded him?”

“There is much that I have not had a good time to share with you. So listen to me. We both need to drop our anger and contain our fear. We’ll share every scrap of information we have, and then we’ll act. Together.”

“If there is anything for me to act upon. You’ve already told me that my Shine may be dead.”

Shine. Not Shun. Shine Fallstar. It was not a smile but I showed my teeth to him. “We will discover the truth. And face it. And whatever it is, we will go after them. And we will kill them all, like the bastards we are.”