The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate. Robin Hobb
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would take first watch. She promised to wake me when her duty was over. If I had not been so concerned over your behaviour, I might have seen how peculiar that offer was.’ His wounded look was almost an accusation. ‘She loosed him, and then they left deliberately and quietly. So quietly that not even Nighteyes heard them go.’
There was a question in his words if not his voice. ‘He isn’t feeling well,’ I said, and bit down on any other explanation. Had the wolf deliberately held me deep in sleep while he allowed them to leave? He still slept heavily by my side, the sodden sleep of exhaustion and sickness. ‘Why would she go with him?’
The silence lasted too long. Then, unwillingly the Fool guessed, ‘Perhaps she thought you would kill him, and she didn’t want it to come to that.’
‘I wouldn’t have killed him,’ I replied irritably.
‘Oh? Well, then, I suppose it is good that at least one of us is sure of that. Because frankly, the same fear had crossed my mind.’ He peered at me through the dimness, and then spoke with disarming directness. ‘You frightened me last night, Fitz. No. You terrified me. I almost wondered if I knew you at all.’
I didn’t want to discuss that. ‘Do you think he could have freed himself and then forced Laurel to go with him?’
He was quiet for a time, then accepted my change of subject. ‘That is possible, but only just. Laurel is … very resourceful. She would have found some way to make a noise. Nor can I imagine why he would do so.’ He frowned. ‘Did you think they looked at one another oddly? Almost as if they shared a secret?’
Had he seen something I had not? I tried to think that through, then gave it up as a hopeless task. Reluctantly, I pushed my blanket completely away. I spoke quietly, still not wishing to wake the wolf. ‘We have to go after them. Now.’ My wet, muddy clothes from the night before were clammy and stiff on my body. Well, at least I didn’t have to get dressed. I stood up. I refastened my swordbelt a notch closer to its old setting. Then I stopped, staring at the blanket.
‘I covered you,’ the Fool admitted quietly. He added, ‘Let Nighteyes sleep, at least until dawn. We will need some light to find their trail.’ He paused then asked, ‘You say we should follow them because you think … what? That he will go to wherever the Prince has gone? Do you think he would take Laurel there with him?’
I bit a torn corner off my thumbnail. ‘I don’t know what I think,’ I admitted.
For a time we both pondered in silence and darkness. I drew a breath. ‘We must go after the Prince. Nothing must distract us from that. We should go back to where we left his trail yesterday and try to discover it again, if the rains have left anything for us to discover. That is the only path that we are absolutely certain will lead to Dutiful. If that fails us, then we will fall back on trying to follow Laurel and the Piebald and hope that that trail also leads to the Prince.’
‘Agreed,’ the Fool replied softly.
I felt oddly guilty because I felt relief. Not just that he had agreed with me, not just that the Piebald had been put out of my reach, but relief that with Laurel and the prisoner gone, we could drop pretences and just be ourselves. ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said quietly, knowing that he would know what I meant.
‘So have I.’ His voice came from a new direction. In the dark, he was up and moving silently and gracefully as a cat. That thought brought my dream back to me abruptly. I grasped at the tattering fragments of it. ‘I think the Prince might be in danger,’ I admitted.
‘You’re only now concluding that?’
‘A different type of danger to what I expected. I suspected the Witted ones of luring him away from Kettricken and the court, of bribing him with a cat to be his Wit-partner so that they could take him off and make him one of their own. But last night, I dreamed, and … it was an evil dream, Fool. Of the Prince displaced from himself, of the cat exerting so much influence over their bonding that he could scarcely recall who or what he was.’
‘That could happen?’
‘I wish I knew for certain. The whole thing was so peculiar. It was his cat, and yet it was not. There was a woman, but I never saw her. When I was the Prince, I loved her. And the cat, I loved the cat, too. I think the cat loved me, but it was hard to tell. The woman was almost … between us.’
‘When you were the Prince.’ I could tell that he could not even decide how to phrase the question.
The mouth of the cave was a lighter bit of darkness now. The wolf slumbered on. I fumbled through an explanation. ‘Sometimes, at night … it’s not exactly Skilling. Nor is it completely the Wit. I think that even in my magic, I am a bastard cross of two lines, Fool. Perhaps that is why Skilling sometimes hurts so much. Perhaps I never learned to do it properly at all. Maybe Galen was right about me, all the time –’
‘When you were the Prince,’ he reminded me firmly.
‘In the dreams, I become him. Sometimes I recall who I truly am. Sometimes I simply become him and know where he is and what he is doing. I share his thoughts, but he is not aware of me, nor can I speak to him. Or perhaps I can. I’ve never tried. In the dreams, it never occurs to me to try. I simply become him, and ride along.’
He made a small sound, like breathing out thoughtfully. Dawn came in the way it does at the change of the seasons, going from dark to pearly grey all in an instant. And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over, that the thunderstorm last night had drowned it and washed it away, and the days of autumn were undeniably upon us. There was a smell in the air of leaves soon to fall, and plants abandoning their greenery to sink back into their roots, and even of seeds on the wing seeking desperately for a place to settle and sink before the frosts of winter found them.
I turned away from the mouth of our cave and found the Fool, already dressed in clean clothes, putting the final touch to our packing … ‘There’s just a bit of bread, and an apple left,’ he told me. ‘And I don’t think Nighteyes would fancy the apple.’
He tossed me the bread for the wolf. As the light of day reached his face, Nighteyes stirred. He carefully thought nothing at all as he rose, cautiously stretched, and then went to lap water from the pool at the back of the cave. When he came back, he dropped down beside me and accepted the bread as I broke it into pieces.
So. How long have they been gone? I asked him.
You know I let them go. Why do you even ask me that?
I was silent for a time. I had changed my mind. Couldn’t you feel that? I had decided I wouldn’t even hurt him, let alone kill him.
Changer. Last night you bore us both too close to a very dangerous place. Neither one of us truly knew what you would do. I chose to let them go rather than find out. Did I choose wrong?
I didn’t know. That was the frightening part, that I didn’t know. I wouldn’t ask him to help me track Laurel and the archer. Instead I asked, Think we can pick up the Prince’s trail?
I promised you I would, didn’t I? Let us simply do what we must do and then go home.
I bowed my head. It sounded good to me.
The Fool had been juggling the apple in one hand. Once Nighteyes had finished eating, he stopped, gripped the apple in both hands, and then gave it a sudden twist. It broke smoothly into two halves, and he tossed one to me. I caught it, and shook my head at him, grinning. ‘Every time I think I know all your tricks –’
‘You find out how wrong you are,’ he finished. He ate his half rapidly, saving the core for Malta, and I did the same with Myblack. The hungry horses were not enthusiastic about the day ahead. I smoothed their ragged coats a bit before I saddled them and fastened our saddle-packs to Myblack. Then we led them out and down the gravelly slope, now slippery with mud. The wolf limped along behind us.
As so often happens after a good thunderstorm, the sky was blue and clear. The scents of the day were strong as the rising sun warmed the wet earth. Birds sang. Overhead, a flock of