Fool’s Quest

I looked at my feet, ashamed. She did deserve to know. “He knew no secret. He had no knowledge to give them. They demanded to know where his son was. To me he has said that he has no knowledge of any such son.”

“A son.” A strange look came over her face, as if she could not decide whether to laugh or weep. “So. Are you finally giving a definite answer to the question Starling put to him so many years ago? He is, then, a man?”

I took breath, paused, and then replied, “Kettricken, he is what he is. A very private person.”

She cocked her head at me. “Well, if the Fool had given birth to a son, I think he would remember that. So that leaves him only the male role.”

I started to say that not every child was fathered in the same way. The thought of how King Verity had borrowed my body to lie with her, leaving me for a night in his old man’s skin, swept through my mind like a storm. I folded my lips on my words and looked aside from her.

“I will visit him,” she said quietly.

I nodded, relieved. There was a tap at her door. “I should go now, so you may meet your next supplicant.”

“No, you should stay. The next visitor concerns you.”

I was not entirely surprised when a page ushered Web into the room. He halted inside the door while two serving girls entered with trays of refreshments. They arranged everything on a low table while we all looked at one another. Web scowled briefly at my disguise, and I saw him reorder his impression of the man he had glimpsed last night. It was not the first time he had witnessed me assume a different character. As he evaluated me in my new guise, I studied him as well.

Web had changed since last we had spoken. For a number of years following the death of his Wit-bird Risk, he had not repartnered. That loss had wrought a change in him. When I had lost my wolf, I felt as if half my soul had gone missing, as if there were too much empty space in both my mind and my body. For a time, I had seen that same emptiness in Web when he and Nettle’s brother Swift would visit Molly and me at Withywoods. His eyes had lost their bird-brightness, and he had walked as if he were anchored to the earth. He had seemed to age decades in a matter of months.

Today he walked with his shoulders squared, and his gaze darted quickly around the room, taking in every detail. The difference was a good one, as if he had rediscovered youth. I found myself smiling at him. “Who is she?” I greeted him.

Web’s eyes met mine. “He. Not she. A young kestrel named Soar.”

“A kestrel. A bird of prey. That must be different for you.”

Web smiled and shook his head, his expression as fond as if he spoke of a child when he said, “We both have so much to learn of each other. We have been together less than four months. It is a new life for me, Fitz. His eyesight! Oh, and his appetite and his fierce joy in the hunt.” He laughed aloud and seemed almost breathless. There was more gray in his hair and deeper lines in his face, but his laugh was a boy’s.

I felt a moment of envy. I recalled the headiness of the first days with a new partner. As a child, I had joined myself to Nosy without the least hesitation, and experienced a summer with the full senses of a young hound amplifying my own. He had been taken from me. Then there had been Smithy, the dog I had bonded to in complete defiance of Burrich and common sense. Lost to me when he gave his life defending my friend. They had been companions to my heart. But it had been Nighteyes the wolf who had wrapped his soul around mine. Together we had hunted and together we had killed, both game and men. The Wit bonded us to all life. From him, I had learned to master both the exhilaration of the hunt and the shared pain of the kill. Recalling that bond, my envy faded. No one could replace him. Could another woman ever be to me what Molly had been? Would I ever have a friend who knew me as the Fool did? No. Such bonds in a man’s life are unique. I found my tongue. “I’m happy for you, Web. You look a new man.”

“I am. And I am as sad for you as you are glad for me. I wish you had a Wit- companion to sustain you in your loss.”

What to say to that? There were no words. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “It has been hard.”

Kettricken had kept silent during our exchange, but she watched me keenly. The Witmaster found a cushion and lowered himself to sit beside the table. He offered Kettricken a wide smile and then regarded the food with interest.