Fool’s Quest

She lifted one brow. “Lily there told me she used an axe. I’ve not seen her with one yet, so I can’t say. Vital looks as if he might be one. Someday. Why? Do you feel as if we’ll have need for that sort of guardsman in your company?”

“I thought I might find a practice partner.”

She stared at me for a moment. Then she took in a breath through her nose, stepped forward, and with no hesitation felt my upper right arm and then my forearm. Her backhand to my belly took me by surprise but I didn’t lose my wind. “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not very princely.” I looked at her and after a moment, she nodded. “Very well. Lily!”

The woman she summoned was my height and well muscled. Foxglove sent her off for practice axes with weighted wooden bits. Then she asked me, “In those garments?”

I didn’t want to go back up to my chambers and change. Too much time, too many thoughts nagging to explode in my brain. “It will be fine,” I said.

“No. It won’t. I think there are some leather jerkins in the equipment storage. Go now so you don’t keep Lily waiting.” As I turned to go, she added, “Here’s something to think about. Your mind will remember how to do something and you will think you can still do it. Your body will try. And fail. Don’t hurt yourself today. It will come back to you. Not quickly, and not all of it, but enough.”

I didn’t believe her. But long before the end of her practice drills with her recruits, I did. Lily thrashed me. Even when I imagined her as one of the Chalcedean mercenaries who had taken my little girl, I could not defeat her. The wooden practice axe, weighted with lead to give it heft, weighed as much as a horse. I was not sure if it was mercy or pity that made Foxglove summon Lily to work with Vital. As soon as Lily left, she suggested I go to the steams and then rest. I tried not to slink as I left the scene of my defeat. The work had done its task of keeping me unaware of whatever Skill-cure they were working on Chade, but left me in a pit of bleakness that made my elfbark darkness look like a merry sleigh ride. I’d just proved to myself that even if I had the opportunity this moment to reclaim my daughter, she’d probably watch me die in the attempt. I think my morose expression kept anyone from speaking to me in the steams. I might appear to be the midst of my fourth decade of life to others, but it had been more than thirty years since I’d been the muscled oarsman and warrior I’d been in my twenties. My body reflected the life I’d lived for the past twenty years as a gentleman farmer.

When I stumped up to the door of my chamber, I found Steady leaning against the door. I unlocked it and without a word he followed me inside. When I closed the door behind us, he spoke. “That’s going to be an amazing black eye by tomorrow.”

“Probably.” I looked at Burrich and Molly’s son. The bottom of my despair opened and I fell through it. Burrich’s eyes, Molly’s mouth . . . “I don’t know how to save your little sister. Today, for one moment, we had that chance with Chade. And it’s gone now. I don’t know where Bee is and even if I did, I doubt I can win her back. My Skill is tattering, I can’t wield a blade like I used to. Just when she needs me most, I can’t help her.” The useless, stupid words tumbled from my mouth. His face went almost blank. Then he took two short steps toward me, seized me by my upper arms, and put his face close to mine. “Stop it,” he snarled. “You’re drowning us all in hopelessness when we need to be strong. Fitz, after my father died, you came to us. And you were the one who taught me to be a man. In El’s name, live up to that! Get your walls up! And hold them.”

I felt like a man who suddenly realizes his purse has been cut. That sudden surprise and moment of checking to see if I could be mistaken. No. My walls were down and indeed I’d been letting my emotions overflow like a river in flood. I slammed them up and then realized that I’d drawn on Steady’s strength to do so. True to his name, he stood before me like a rock, clutching my arms. “Have you got them?” he asked me gruffly, and I nodded. “Hold them, then,” he ordered, and released me, stepping back. I thought he staggered a little, but at my concerned look he smiled. “I caught my heel on your rug. That’s all.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed and checked my walls again. “Are they tight enough?” I asked him and he nodded slowly. “I’m not myself,” I said, hating the feeble excuse.

“No. You’re not, Tom . . . Fitz. We all hate that we have to wait and hope for word, but it’s all we can do. No one blames you for what happened. How could anyone have foreseen it? We are up against a magic as unstoppable as when the Red Ships were Forging our towns.” He smiled small. “Or so I suspect. That was before my time.”

I nodded at him, unconsoled.

He sat down beside me. “Do you remember anything unusual about your passage through the stones?”