Fool’s Quest

“Just let him eat first,” Dutiful advised as if I were an ill-mannered dog or perhaps a very small child. “He’s sharing his hunger with the whole castle.” And again, I could think of no words. Thoughts were too fast for words and too complex. There was too much to say, more than anyone could ever say in a lifetime about even the simplest things. But before I could despair about that, Riddle put the food in front of me. I recognized it as having come from the guard’s mess, the simple hearty food one could find there at any hour of the day or night. A thick brown soup, lumpy with vegetables and chunks of meat, good brown bread with a chewy crust. Riddle had not skimped when he had buttered two slabs of that, nor on the wedges of orange cheese beside them. The flagon of ale on the tray had spilled over a bit, wetting the edge of the bread. I didn’t care.

“He’s going to choke,” someone said, but I didn’t.

“Fitz?” said Dutiful.

I turned to look at him. It was strange to remember that there were people in the room. Devouring the meal had been such a consuming experience, it was startling to discover the world could hold more sensory information than that. My eyes wandered over his face, finding my features in his, and then Kettricken’s.

“Are you feeling a bit more yourself?” he asked. I wondered how much time had passed. I found I was breathing hard. Eating that fast was hard work. No one else had spoken since his last words. Was that how time was truly measured? In how many people spoke, in how much information was shared? Perhaps it was measured in how much food one ate. I tried to pare my thoughts down to something that might fit in words.

“I think I feel better,” I said. No. That wasn’t true. I thought nothing of the kind. Better than what? My thoughts raced away from me again. Someone was touching me. Nettle. She had moved behind me and set her hands on my shoulders. She was making my walls stronger. Making me one thing, one separate person instead of the taste of the bread and the sound of the fire crackling. Separating me out from everything else.

“I’m going to talk,” Dutiful said. “And I’m going to hope you are listening, and that you can find the sense of my words better than Chade can. Fitz. Fitz, look at me. You were almost a day in the stones. You told us you were coming, and we waited for you, and you didn’t emerge. Nettle reached out to try and find you, and with Steady’s strength and Riddle helping her she found you and held you together until I could reach into the stone and draw you out. Eda and El, that was strange! I felt I found your hand and pulled you out of the earth itself!

“Chade was still bleeding, and so were you, but not as badly. If you are concerned for the bodies you left behind, well, that has been tended to. Chade’s emissary was still at Withy, and we gave him the mission of conveying to the rest of the Rousters that unknown persons had attacked you, and that their fellows had given their lives to win you safe passage to the stones. For now, they need hear nothing of treachery, though I’ll wager that some of them will know or suspect there were traitors in their band. I required them all to take an oath of silence on the topic of what happened at Withywoods, witnessed by FitzVigilant in my stead. There is no sense panicking folk over the idea that invisible raiders may attack anywhere. And after brief thought, I have directed Lady Rosemary to undertake whatever quiet work she feels is needed to bring justice to Shun’s stepfather. Shun! Such a name!

“I have put out a notice to all our patrols to be looking for sleighs bearing a small girl and a young woman, and folk on white horses, and also to ask at every ferry crossing and ice bridge if anyone like that has been seen. They cannot simply vanish, and I think it unlikely they can have passed our borders yet. We will find and recover both Bee and Lady Shun.”

The words he spoke made pictures in my mind. I looked at all of them carefully. They were things we wished to be so, and perhaps might never be. Nonetheless, they were pictures that pleased me greatly. “Thank you,” I said at last. The words were thin, insubstantial as wind. They didn’t convey what I felt. I took a breath. “Thank you.”

Riddle slapped his hand over his heart and gawked at me. Nettle lowered her face and breathed deeply for several breaths. Dutiful sank down slowly to sit on the floor.

“Is that what it feels like? The Skill?” Riddle spoke.

Nettle shook her head. “No. I don’t know what to call that. Well, yes, it is the Skill, but it is the Skill as a hammer’s blow rather than as a finger tap. Dutiful, what can we do? He’s more dangerous than Thick. If he goes on like this, he may damage some of the newer Skill-apprentices who cannot wall him out.”