Fool’s Quest

I took the button from my pocket and the fox pin from inside my shirt, where habit had placed it when I dressed. His crippled hands worked awkwardly at the collar of my shirt, folding the fabric and then securing it with the pin so that it suddenly looked and felt like a different garment to me. By the time he had finished and I had scrubbed the last of the ink spots from my face, Ash was back with a full armload of belts, vests, paint, powder, and a very sharp knife. The lad sheared the buttons from my trousers and then plucked the loose threads away. He was good with face paint; I almost asked if he had applied it for his mother, and then bit back the question. He traded my belt for a heavier one, and my belt-knife for a more substantial blade, one that verged on being a short sword. The hat that he produced for me had undoubtedly been made for a lady, sixty or seventy years ago. Ruthlessly, he stripped the feathers from it before handing it over to the Fool, who felt it carefully, and then commanded the boy to restore two small feathers and add a leather strap with a showy buckle to the crown. The silver button they threaded with heavy twine and fastened to my wrist. “We should order a fine silver chain for that,” the Fool suggested and the boy grinned, dug in a small box, and produced one.

“Excellent choice!” the Fool praised him as he fingered the fish-scale links, and in a trice they had redone the narwhal.

By the time they finished, they were both chortling and congratulating each other. Ash seemed to have lost all uneasiness around the Fool; indeed, they seemed to have established a swift camaraderie. “The final touch for the Witted Bastard,” the Fool exclaimed. “Motley. Will you ride on his shoulder and be his Wit-beast for the evening?”

“No,” I said, appalled, even as the bird cocked her head at me and responded, “Fitz—Chivalry!”

“She can’t, Fool. She’s not my companion. It will offend Web if I pretend she is. And I have no way to reassure her that she is safe in such a crowded and noisy space.”

“Ah, well.” The Fool understood immediately, even if he could not conceal his disappointment.

Ash had tilted his head and was looking at me speculatively. “What?” I asked, thinking that he’d found something awry in my garments.

He glanced away from the Fool but tipped a nod toward him. “He says he was there. With you, in the Mountains, when you woke the dragons and sent them to aid King Verity.”

I was startled both by the lad being brave enough to ask such a question and by the idea that the Fool would have spoken so freely to him of our time together. “It’s true,” I managed to say.

“But the minstrel didn’t mention him at all last night.”

The Fool gave an abrupt caw of laughter, and the crow immediately mimicked him.

“And that is true also,” I agreed.

“But Lady Starling said she sang true.”

“Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.”

“He told me that he rode a dragon behind a girl who had been carved from the same stone as the dragon and that they flew up into the sky and saw some of the battles.” The lad was getting bolder. The Fool gave me a sightless glance.

“I myself saw him fly away on the back of a dragon. Girl-on-a-Dragon we called her. And if he has favored you with an account of battles he saw, well, then you know more of it now than I’ve ever heard.”

A slow smile spread over the boy’s face. “Then he’s a hero, too.”

I nodded. “Without him, Queen Kettricken would never have reached the Mountains alive. And I would have died of an arrow wound before ever we went on our quest to seek King Verity. So, yes, he is a hero, too.” I glanced over at the Fool. His face was very still, his fingers perched on the table’s edge.

“She left out a lot.”

“She did.”

“Why?”

Before I could respond, the Fool intervened. “Perhaps someday you should ask her that.” I did not miss the lilt of amusement in his voice as he imagined such an encounter.

“I have to go.” A thought came to me and I dared it. “Fool, you should dress and come with me. I think you are strong enough to manage it, at least for an hour or so.”

“No.” His response was swift and strong.

I regretted my words instantly. The old light that had shone so briefly in his face, his pleasure in helping me and telling Ash stories, had vanished as if it had never been. The fear was back and he cringed back in his chair. I looked at him and wondered how he had ever managed to muster his courage to travel so far to find me, alone, hurt, and blind. Had he expended the last of his spirit to do so, and would he never recover to be once more the Fool I had known?

“You don’t have to,” I said quietly.