Fool’s Quest

Wings flapped. Motley had been perched on a chair, dozing near the fire’s warmth. She skidded to a landing on the tabletop and walked over to the Fool. “Fool. Fool!” she said in her crow’s voice. She leaned forward and took a lock of his hair in her beak. She groomed it as if it were his plumage. He took in a small breath. She scissored the tip of her beak against his scalp, selected another lock, and groomed it. She made small concerned sounds as she did it. “I know,” he replied. He sighed. He sat up slowly. He held out his fingers and Motley went to him. With one ruined fingertip, he stroked the top of her head. She had calmed him. A bird had done what I could not.

“I’ll protect you,” I lied to him. He knew it was a lie. I had not protected my people at Withywoods, not Lant or Shun or even my precious Bee. The thought of my failures soaked me and sank me.

Then fury. Red fury suddenly blazed up in me.

Fitz?

It’s nothing, I lied to Dutiful. I bottled and corked my anger. Private. So private. They’d hurt my Fool, possibly killed my friend Prilkop, and stolen my daughter. And I had done nothing to them, and could do nothing until I knew more. But when I knew more . . . “I’ll protect you and we will kill them all,” I promised him savagely. I spoke my oath tightly, only to him. I leaned in close to whisper the words. “They will bleed and die and we will take back our own from them.” I heard him draw a trembling breath. Tears, tinged gold rather than yellow, were creeping down his scarred cheeks.

“We will kill them all?” he asked in a small and shaky voice.

I walked my hand across the table, tapping my nails so he heard it coming. I took his bony hand in mine. I claimed a silent moment to gather my courage and chill my anger to edged cold. Was this right? Was I exploiting his fears for my own ends? Making promises I could not fulfill? But what else could I do? It was for Bee. “Fool. Beloved. You have to help me now. We will kill them all, but only if you can help me. Why did they come to Withywoods? Why did they take Bee and Shun? What do they intend? Why were Chalcedeans there? And most of all, where would they take them? Where? The other questions matter, but even if all you can tell me is where, it will be enough for me to find them and kill them and take back my child.”

I saw him compose himself. I watched him think. I waited for him. He found the cup, lifted it, and took a cautious sip. “It’s my fault,” he said. I wanted to contradict him, to interrupt him and assure him it was not his fault. But his words had begun to flow and I did not want to divert them.

“Once they knew what you meant to me, they were bound to seek you out. To see if you held the secret that they had not been able to drag out of me. The Servants had your name; I’ve told you how that came about. They knew of FitzChivalry and they knew of Buckkeep. But of Tom Badgerlock and Withywoods they could not know. The messengers I sent to you—I did not tell them your name. I gave them pieces of information they could use as they traveled to find the next place and ask the next question that might bring them to you. Fitz, I did my best to protect you, even as I sent you my request and my warning. I can only suppose that they captured one of my messengers and tortured it out of him.” He took a noisy sip of his tea, sucking in air with the scalding brew.

“Or perhaps they just followed me. Perhaps they could see what I could not, that it was inevitable that I would make my way back to my Catalyst. Perhaps they even were counting on you to kill me. How sweet they must have found that!

“But now I fear a thing even darker. If they knew I had asked you to find the Unexpected Son and keep him safe, they might have suspected you had already done so. And perhaps they descended on Withywoods hoping to find him. You heard that they were asking for him.

“But here is the darkest thing of all. What if they know more than we can possibly know? What if they have generated new prophecies since you brought me back from the dead and rendered so much of the old future impossible? What if they knew that if you found me in the marketplace, you would kill me? Or what if they knew that if you nearly killed me, you would try to save me? That you would take me and leave your own home unguarded, so they might go in to rape and plunder and search for the Unexpected Son with nothing to fear?”

His words filled me with uneasiness even before he said, “What if we are still dancing to their tune? And we do not hear it, so we cannot change the step of how we prance and turn to their wills?”

I was silent, trying to conceive of such an enemy. An enemy who would know what I would do before I decided to do it.

“It is no use fearing that,” he said sadly into my silence. “If it is so, we are helpless against them. And the only logical response to that would be to stop struggling. And thus they would win. At least, if we fight, we can be a nuisance to them.”