Fool’s Quest

I’d remembered how to pull air into my lungs. “Trying to stop . . .” I pulled in another breath. “. . . the poisons.” It was so hard to roll over. I ached in every fiber of my body. When I set my hands to the floor to try to lever myself up, they were wet. Slippery. I lifted them and brought them up to my eyes. They were dripping with watery blood and fluid. Chade shoved a table napkin into my hands.

Nettle had thrown wood on the fire, and it was catching. Now she kindled fresh candles and replaced the ones that had burned to stubs. “It stinks,” she said, looking at the Fool. “They’re all open and running.”

“Heat clean water,” Chade told her.

“Shouldn’t we summon the healers?”

“Too much to explain, and if he dies it were better that it did not have to be explained at all. Fitz. Get up. Talk to us.”

Nettle was like her mother, stronger than one expected a small woman to be. I had managed to sit up, and she seized me under my arms and helped me to my feet. I caught my weight on the chair and nearly overset it. “I feel terrible,” I said. “So weak. So tired.”

“So now perhaps you know how Riddle felt after you burned his strength so carelessly,” she responded tartly.

Chade took command of the conversation. “Fitz, why did you cut the Fool like this? Did you quarrel?”

“He didn’t cut the Fool.” Nettle had found the water I’d left warming by the fire. She wet the same cloth I’d used earlier, wrung it out, and wiped it gingerly down the Fool’s back. Her nose wrinkled and her mouth was pinched tight in disgust at the foul liquids she smeared away. She repeated the action and said, “He was trying to heal him. All of this has been pushed from the inside out.” She spared me a disdainful glance. “Sit on the hearth before you fall over. Did you give a thought to simply using a pulling poultice on this instead of recklessly attempting a Skill-healing on your own?”

I took her suggestion and attempted to collapse back to the hearth in a controlled fashion. As neither of them was looking at me, it was a wasted effort. “I didn’t,” I said, beginning an attempt to explain that I had not, at first, intended to heal him. Then I stopped. I wouldn’t waste my time.

Chade had suddenly sat forward with an enlightened expression on his face. “Ah! Now I understand. The Fool must have been strapped to a chair with spikes protruding from the back, and the strap slowly tightened to force him gradually onto the spikes. If he struggled, the wounds became larger. As the strap was tightened, the spikes went deeper. These old injuries appear to me as if he held out for quite a long time. But I would suspect there was something on the spikes, excrement or some other foul matter, intended to deliberately trigger a long-term infection.”

“Chade. Please,” I said weakly. The image he painted made me queasy. I hoped the Fool had remained unconscious. I did not really want to know how the Servants had caused his wounds. Nor did I want him to remember.

“And the interesting part of that,” Chade went on, heedless of my plea, “is that the torturer was employing a philosophy of torment that I’ve never encountered before. I was taught that for torture to be effective at all, the victim must be allowed an element of hope: hope that the pain would stop, hope that the body could still heal, and so on. If you take that away, what has the subject to gain by surrendering his information? In this case, if he was aware that his wounds were deliberately being poisoned, once the spikes had pierced his flesh, then—”

“Lord Chade! Please!” Nettle looked revolted.

The old man stopped. “Your pardon, Skillmistress. Sometimes I forget . . .” He let his words trail away. Nettle and I both knew what he meant. The type of dissertation he had been delivering was fit only for an apprentice or fellow assassin, not for anyone with normal sensibilities.

Nettle straightened and dropped the wet cloth in the bowl of water. “I’ve cleaned his wounds as well as water can. I can send down to the infirmary for a dressing.”

“No need to involve them. We have herbs and unguents here.”

“I’m sure you do,” she responded. She looked down on me. “You look terrible. I suggest we ask a page to fetch you breakfast in your room below. He’ll be told that you overindulged last night.”

“I’ve just the lad for the job,” Chade declared abruptly. “His name is Ash.”

He flicked a glance at me, and I did not betray to Nettle that I’d already met the lad. “I’m sure he’ll do fine,” I agreed quietly, even as I wondered what plan Chade was unfolding.

“Well, then, I’ll leave you two. Lord Feldspar, I’ve been informed by Lady Kettricken that you begged for a brief audience with her tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late. You should join those waiting outside her private audience chamber.”