Fool’s Quest

We ate the hare, drank the broth, and made a fruity tea from the berries I’d found. While I’d been away, Lant and Per had made improvements to our camp. They’d dragged a longer piece of log to the fireside for us to sit on and had arranged our supplies more efficiently. I looked at the large pack that the Fool and Spark had left. Plainly they had packed for a substantial journey. But if these supplies were for Kelsingra, why had they left them here? And if the Fool had wished to journey with me, why had he and Spark gone on without me? I sat and stared at the fire and waited.

“Should I take the first watch?” Per asked me.

His voice startled me. I turned to look at his worried face. “No, Per. I’m not tired yet. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s your watch.”

He sat down beside me. “I slept while you were gone. There was little else to do. So I’m not tired, either.”

I didn’t argue with him. Later, when it was his turn to keep watch, he’d learn that he’d made a poor choice. Lant had already gone to bed. For a time, we stared at the fire in silence.

“Why were they dressed like girls?”

Secrets, secrets, secrets. Who owned the secrets? “You’d need to ask them about that.”

He was quiet for a while. Then he asked, “Is Ash a girl?”

“You’d need to ask Ash about that.”

“I did. And he asked me why I was dressed as a boy.”

“And what did you answer to that?” I prodded him.

He was quiet again and then said, “That means he’s a girl.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” He hunched tighter toward the fire. “Why would Ash pretend to be a boy?”

“You’d need to ask Spark about that.”

“Spark.” The name annoyed him. He scowled and wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m not going to bother. I don’t trust him any longer.” His face set into hardness. “I don’t need a friend who deceives me.”

I took a deep breath and then sighed it out. There were a hundred things I could say to him. A hundred questions I could ask that might make him see things differently. But being told something is not the same as learning it. I thought of all the things Verity had told me. Burrich’s stern advice. Patience’s counsel. But when had I learned?

“Talk to Spark,” I said.

His silence was long. “Maybe,” he said at last.

Since, as he said, he seemed wide awake, I left him sitting there, shoved Lant over to make room, and crawled under the blankets. I gnawed on my questions. I must have slept, because I woke when Lant traded places with Per. The boy pushed his back up against mine, sighed heavily, and soon began to snore. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. After a time, I got up and went to join Lant by the fire. He was heating snow-water in a pot for tea. I sat down beside him and stared into the flames.

“Why do you dislike me so much?”

I didn’t need to think about it. “You made my daughter unhappy. And when I had to entrust her to you, you didn’t care for her or comfort her. Revel was the one to come and take her in from the snowy wagon.”

He was silent. “We were confused, Shine and I. We could make no sense of what you and Riddle were doing. You told us next to nothing. I tried to take Bee out of the wagon and she acted like . . . like a sulky child. I was tired, and cold, and angry with you. So I left her to find her own way in. If none of this had happened, would it have been so important? Fitz, I did not want to be a scribe, let alone a tutor to children. I wanted to be at Buckkeep Castle, with my friends, following my own life. I’ve never had the care of children, and even you must admit that Bee was no ordinary child.”

“That’s enough,” I suggested pleasantly. He had stirred guilt in me, until his last words.

“I’m not like you!” he burst out. “I’m not like my father. I tried to be, to please him. But I’m not! And I don’t want to be. I’m here, I’m going with you, because, yes, I failed your daughter. Just as much as I failed my sister. My sister. Do you know how it twists inside me to name her that? What they did to Shine, to my sister—it makes me ill to think of her hurt that way. I want to avenge her, I want to avenge Bee. I know I can’t undo what happened. I can’t change what I did, only what I will do. And I’m not doing this for you, or even for my father. I’m doing it for me. To give myself whatever peace I can find over what happened.

“I don’t know how I’ll help you or what you’ll ask me to do or if I can do it. But I’m here. I intend to try. And I can’t go home until this is done. But I do want to go home, after all this is over, and I want to go home alive. So you’d better start talking to me and telling me what is going on, or teaching me what I have to do. Or something. Because I’m with you now until you go home. Or I’m dead. And I think that boy is, too.”

“I don’t want you here. I didn’t want you to come.”

“Yet here we are. And I don’t think even you are spiteful enough to let me die of ignorance.”