Fool’s Quest

She said nothing to that but watched me as I went to the window and opened it. It was a blue-sky day. I looked out over castle walls topped with an extra rampart of snow. I had expected it to be dawn. It wasn’t. I had slept all the night and part of the morning away. She hopped to the sill and launched without a backward glance. I closed the window and then secured the secret door. The cold air on my face had tightened the faulty stitches. They had to come out. The Fool was blind, and taking them out myself would require holding a mirror with one hand and picking at them with the other. I certainly did not want to call back the healer who had done this to me.

Without thinking, I reached for Chade. Could you help me remove the stitches in my brow? My body is trying to heal and the stitches are puckering the flesh.

I felt him there, at the end of my Skill-thread. He drifted like a gull riding the breeze. Then he said softly, I can see the warmth of the flames through the spy-hole. It’s cold here but I must stay for the whole watch. I hate him so. I want to go home. I just want to go home.

Chade? Are you dreaming? You’re safe home, in Buckkeep Castle.

I want to go back to our little farm. I should have inherited it, not him. He had no right to send me away like this. I miss my mother. Why did she have to die?

Chade. Wake up! It’s a bad dream!

Fitz. Stop, please. Nettle shushed me. Her Skilling to me was tight and private. None of her apprentices or journeymen would hear us. We are trying to keep him calm. I’m looking for a dream that might soothe him and give him a road back to us. But I seem to find only his nightmares. Come to his room, and I’ll see to your stitches.

Remember to come as Prince FitzChivalry! Dutiful cut in, riding her stream of thought. You caused enough talk when you stole that horse. I’ve bought it for you, at twice what any horse should be worth! I’ve tried to explain it was a mistake, that you’d ordered up a horse and thought the roan was for you. But be circumspect with any you meet and try to avoid conversation. We are still trying to construct a plausible history for you. If anyone comments on your youthful appearance, imply that it’s an effect from your years among the Elderlings. And please be suitably mysterious about that!

I affirmed that in a tight Skill-sending to Dutiful. Then I considered myself carefully in the looking-glass. I was seething with impatience to go after Bee, but riding out randomly was as likely to take me farther away from her as to put me on her trail. I tamped down my frustration. I had to wait. Stand and wait. The Fool’s suggestion that we dash off to Clerres, a journey of months, seemed premature to me. Every day that I traveled south was another day of Bee held captive by Chalcedeans. Better by far to recapture Bee and Shun sooner rather than later, before they could be carried out of the Six Duchies. Now that we knew who and what they were, it seemed unlikely to me that they could elude our search efforts. The reports would come back here, to Buckkeep. Surely somewhere, someone had seen a sign of them.