WHEN ALL THE records are compared, it becomes plain that no more than twenty Red-Ships actually ventured inland as far as Turlake, and only twelve proceeded past Turlake to menace the villages adjoining Tradeford. The minstrels would have us believe there were scores of ships, and literally hundreds of Raiders upon their decks. In song, the banks of the Buck and Vin Rivers were red with flames and blood that summer. They are not to be faulted for this. The misery and terror of those days should never be forgotten. If a minstrel must embroider the truth to help us recall it fully, then let her, and let no one say she has lied. Truth is often much larger than facts.
Starling came back with the Fool that evening. No one asked her why she no longer kept watch. No one even suggested that perhaps we should flee the quarry before Regal's troops cornered us there. We would stay and we would stand, and we would fight. To defend a stone dragon.
And we would die. That went without saying. Quite literally, it was knowledge that none of us uttered.
When Kettricken had fallen asleep, exhausted, I carried her down to the tent she had shared with Verity. I laid her down on her blankets, and covered her well. I stooped and kissed her lined forehead as if I were kissing my sleeping child. It was a farewell, of sorts. Better to do things now, I had decided. Now was all I had for certain.
As dusk fell, Starling and the Fool sat by the fire. She played her harp softly, wordlessly, and looked into the flames. A bared knife lay on the ground beside her. I stood a time and watched how the firelight touched her face. Starling Birdsong, the last minstrel to the last true Farseer King and Queen. She would write no song that anyone would recall.
The Fool sat still and listened. They had found a friendship, of sorts. I thought to myself, if this is the last night she can play, he can give her no finer thing than that. To listen well, and let her music lull him with her skill.
I left them sitting there and took up a full waterskin. Slowly I climbed the ramp up to the dragon. Nighteyes followed me. Earlier, I had built a fire on the dais. Now I fed it from what remained of Kettricken's firewood, and then sat down beside it. Verity and Kettle slept on. Once Chade had used carris seed for two days straight. When he collapsed, he had taken most of a week to recover. All he had wanted to do was sleep and drink water. I doubted that either would awaken soon. It was all right. There was nothing left to say to them anyway. So I simply sat beside Verity and kept watch over my king.
I was a poor watchman. I came awake to his whispering my name. I sat up instantly and reached for the waterskin I had brought with me. "My king," I said quietly.
But Verity was not sprawled on the stone, weak and helpless. He stood over me. He made a sign to me to rise and follow him. I did, moving as quietly as he did. At the base of the dragon's dais, he turned to me. Without a word, I offered him the waterskin. He drank half of what it held, paused a bit, and then drank the rest. When he was finished, he handed it back to me. He cleared his throat. "There is a way, FitzChivalry." His dark eyes, so like my own, met mine squarely. "You are the way. So full of life and hungers. So torn with passions."
"I know," I said. The words came out bravely. I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. Regal had scared me badly in his dungeon. But that had been pain. This was death. I suddenly knew the difference. My traitorous hands twisted the front hem of my tunic.
"You will not like it," he warned me. "I do not like it. But I see no other way."
"I am ready," I lied. "Only … I should like to see Molly once more. To know that she and Nettle are safe. And Burrich."
He peered at me. "I recall the bargain you offered. That I would not take Nettle for the throne." He glanced away from me. "What I ask of you will be worse. Your actual life. All the life and energy of your body. I have spent all my passions, you see. I have nothing left. If I could but kindle in myself one more night of feelings … if I could recall what it was to desire a woman, to hold the woman I loved in my arms …" His voice dwindled away from me. "It shames me to ask it of you. Shames me more than when I drew strength from you, when you were no more than an unsuspecting boy." He met my eyes again and I knew how he struggled to use words. Imperfect words. "But you see, even that. The shame I feel, the pain that I do this to you … even that is what you give me. Even that I can put into the dragon." He looked away from me. "The dragon must fly, Fitz. He must."
"Verity. My king." He stared away from me. "My friend." His eyes came back to mine. "It is all right. But … I should like to see Molly again. Even briefly."
"It is dangerous. I think what I did to Carrod woke true fear in them. They have not tried their strength against us since then, only their cunning. But …"
"Please." I said the small word quietly.
Verity sighed. "Very well, boy. But my heart misgives me."
Not a touch. He didn't even take a breath. Even as Verity dwindled, that was the power of his Skill. We were there, with them. I sensed Verity retreating, giving me the illusion I was there alone.
It was an inn room. Clean and well furnished. A branch of candles burned beside a loaf of bread and a bowl of apples on a table. Burrich lay shirtless on his side on the bed. Blood had clotted thickly about the knife wound and soaked the waist of his breeches. His chest moved in the slow, deep rhythms of sleep. He was curled around Nettle. She was snugged against him, deeply asleep, his right arm over her protectively. As I watched, Molly leaned over them and deftly slid the babe from under Burrich's arm. Nettle did not stir as she was carried over to a basket in the corner and tucked into the blankets that lined it. Her small pink mouth worked with memories of warm milk. Her brow was smooth beneath her sleek black hair. She seemed none the worse for everything she had endured.
Molly moved efficiently about the room. She poured water into a basin, and took up a folded cloth. She returned to crouch beside Burrich's bed. She set the basin of water on the floor beside the bed and dipped the rag into it. She wrung it out well. As she set it to his back he jerked awake with a gasp. Fast as a striking snake, he had caught her wrist.
"Burrich! Let go, this has to be cleaned." Molly was annoyed with him.
"Oh. It's you." His voice was thick with relief. He released her.
"Of course it's me. Who else would you expect?" She sponged at the knife wound gently, then dipped the rag in the water again. Both the rag in her hand and the basin of water beside her were tinged with blood.
His hand groped carefully over the bed beside him. "What have you done with my baby?" he asked.
"Your baby is fine. She's asleep in a basket. Right there." She wiped his back again, then nodded to herself. "The bleeding has stopped. And it looks clean. I think the leather of your tunic stopped most of her thrust. If you sit up, I can bandage it."
Slowly Burrich moved to sit up. He gave one tiny gasp, but when he was sitting up, he grinned at her. He pushed a straggle of hair back from his face. "Wit-bees," he said admiringly. He shook his head at her. I could tell it was not the first time he had said it.
"It was all I could think of," Molly pointed out. She could not keep from smiling back. "It worked, did it not?"
"Wondrously," he conceded. "But how did you know they'd go after the red-bearded one? That was what persuaded them. And damn near persuaded me as well!"
She shook her head to herself. "It was luck. And the light. He had the candles and stood before the hearth. The hut was dim. Bees are drawn to light. Almost like moths are."
"I wonder if they are still inside the hut." He grinned as he watched her rise to take away the bloody rag and water.
"I lost my bees," she reminded him sadly.
"We will go burning for more," Burrich comforted her.
She shook her head sadly. "A hive that has worked the whole summer makes the most honey." At a table in the corner, she took up a roll of clean linen bandaging and a pot of unguent. She sniffed at it thoughtfully. "It doesn't smell like what you make," she observed.
"It will probably work all the same," he said. A frown creased his brow as he looked slowly around the room. "Molly. How are we to pay for all this?"
"I've taken care of it." She kept her back to him.
"How?" he asked suspiciously.
When she looked back at him, her mouth was flat. I'd known better than to argue with that face. "Fitz's pin. I showed it to the innkeeper to get this room. And while you both slept this afternoon, I took it to a jeweler and sold it." He had opened his mouth, but she gave him no chance to speak. "I know how to bargain and I got its full worth."
"Its worth was more than coins. Nettle should have had that pin," Burrich said. His mouth was as flat as hers.
"Nettle needed a warm bed and porridge far more than she needed a silver pin with a ruby in it. Even Fitz would have had the wisdom to know that."
Oddly enough, I did. But Burrich only said, "I shall have to work many days to earn it back for her."
Molly took up the bandages. She did not meet his eyes. "You are a stubborn man, and I am sure you will do as you please about that," she said.
Burrich was silent. I could almost see him trying to decide if that meant he had won the argument. She came back to the bed. She sat beside him on the bed to smear the ointment on his back. He clenched his jaws, but made no sound: Then she came to crouch in front of him. "Lift your arms so I can wrap this," she commanded him. He took a breath and lifted his arms up and away from his body. She worked efficiently, unrolling the bandaging as she wrapped it around him. She tied it over his belly. "Better?" she asked.
"Much." He started to stretch, then thought better of it.
"There's food," she offered as she went to the table.
"In a moment." I saw his look darken. So did Molly. She turned back to him, her mouth gone small. "Molly." He sighed. He tried again. "Nettle is King Shrewd's great grandchild. A Farseer. Regal sees her as a threat to him. He may try to kill you again. Both of you. In fact, I am sure he will." He scratched at his beard. Into her silence, he suggested, "Perhaps the only way to protect you both is to put you under the true king's protection. There is a man I know … perhaps Fitz told you of him. Chade?"
She shook her head mutely. Her eyes were going blacker and blacker.
"He could take Nettle to a safe place. And see you were well provided for." The words came out of him slowly, reluctantly.
Molly's reply was swift. "No. She is not a Farseer. She is mine. And I will not sell her, not for coin or safety." She glared at him and practically spat the words. "How could you think I would! "
He smiled at her anger. I saw guilty relief on his face. "I did not think you would. But I felt obliged to offer it." His next words came even more hesitantly. "I had thought of another way. I do not know what you will think of it. We will still have to travel away from here, find a town where we are not known." He looked at the floor abruptly. "If we were wed before we got there, folk would never question that she was mine…."
Molly stood as still as if turned to stone. The silence stretched. Burrich lifted his eyes and met hers pleadingly. "Do not take this wrong. I expect nothing of you … that way. But … even so, you need not wed me. There are Witness Stones in Kevdor. We could go there, with a minstrel. I could stand before them, and swear she was mine. No one would ever question it."
"You'd lie before a Witness Stone?" Molly asked incredulously. "You'd do that? To keep Nettle safe?"
He nodded slowly. His eyes never left her face.
She shook her head. "No, Burrich, I will not have it. It is the worst of luck, to do such a thing. All know the tales of what becomes of those who profane the Witness Stones with a lie."
"I will chance it." He spoke grimly. I had never known the man to lie before Nettle had come into his life. Now he offered to give a false oath. I wondered if Molly knew what he was offering her.
She did. "No. You will not lie." She spoke with certainty.
"Molly. Please."
"Be quiet!" she said with great finality. She cocked her head and looked at him, puzzling something out. "Burrich?" she asked with a tentative note to her voice. "I have heard it told … Lacey said that once you loved Patience." She took a breath. "Do you love her still?" she asked.
Burrich looked almost angry. Molly met his stare with a pleading look until Burrich looked away from her. She could barely hear his words. "I love my memories of her. As she was then, as I was then. Probably much as you still love Fitz."
It was Molly's turn to wince. "Some of the things I remember … yes." She nodded as if reminding herself of something. Then she looked up and met Burrich's eyes. "But he is dead." So oddly final, those words coming from her. Then, with a plea in her voice, she added, "Listen to me. Just listen. All my life it's been … First my father. He always told me he loved me. But when he struck me and cursed me, it never felt like love to me. Then Fitz He swore he loved me and touched me gently. But his lies never sounded like love to me. Now you … Burrich, you never speak to me of love. You have never touched me, not in anger nor desire.
But both your silence and your look speak more of love to me than ever their words or touches did." She waited. He did not speak. "Burrich?" she asked desperately.
"You are young," he said softly. "And lovely. So full of spirit. You deserve better."
"Burrich. Do you love me?" A simple question, timidly asked.
He folded his work-scarred hands in his lap. "Yes." He gripped his hands together. To stop their trembling?
Molly's smile broke forth like the sun from a cloud. "Then you shall marry me. And afterward, if you wish, I shall stand before the Witness Stones. And I will admit to all that I was with you before we were wed. And I will show them the child."
He finally lifted his eyes' to hers. His look was incredulous. "You'd marry me? As I am? Old? Poor? Scarred?"
"You are none of those things to me. To me, you are the man I love."
He shook his head. Her answer had only baffled him more. "And after what you just said about bad luck? You would stand before a Witness Stone and lie?"
She smiled a different sort of smile at him. One I had not seen in a long time. One that broke my heart. "It need not be a lie," she pointed out quietly.
His nostrils flared like a stallion's as he surged to his feet. The breath he drew swelled his chest.
"Wait," she commanded him softly, and he did. She licked her thumb and forefinger. She swiftly pinched out all but one candle. Then she crossed the darkened room to his arms.
I fled.
"Oh, my boy. I am so sorry."
I shook my head silently. My eyes were squeezed tight shut, but tears leaked from them anyway. I found my voice. "He will be good to her. And Nettle. He is the sort of man she deserves. No, Verity. I should take comfort in it. To know he will be with her, caring for them both."
Comfort. I could find no comfort in it. Only pain.
"It seems a very poor bargain I have made you." Verity sounded genuinely grieved for me.
"No. It's all right." I caught my breath. "Now, Verity. I would it were done quickly."
"Are you sure?"
"As you will."
He took my life from me.
It was a dream I had had before. I knew the feel of an old man's body. The other time, I had been King Shrewd, in a soft nightshirt, in a clean bed: This time was harsher. I ached in every joint of my body. My gut burned inside me. And I had scalded myself, on my face and hands. There was more pain than life left in this body. Like a candle almost burned to the socket. I opened my eyes stickily. I sprawled on cold, gritty stone. A wolf sat watching me.
This is wrong, he told me.
I could think of nothing to say to that. It certainly did not feel right. After a time, I pushed myself up to my hands and knees. My hands hurt. My knees hurt. Every joint in my body creaked and complained as I drew myself up and looked around. The night was warm, but I still shivered. Above me, on a dais, an incomplete dragon slumbered.
I do not understand. Nighteyes pleaded for an explanation.
I do not wish to understand. I do not want to know.
But whether I wished it or not, I did know. I walked slowly and the wolf came at my heels. We walked past a dying fire between two tents. No one kept watch. From Kettricken's tent, there were small noises. Verity's face was what she saw in the dimness. Verity's dark eyes, looking into hers. She believed her husband had finally come to her.
In truth, he had.
I did not want to hear, I did not want to know. I walked on with my old man's careful pacing. Great black blocks of stone loomed around us. Ahead of us, something clicked and chinked softly. I walked through the sharp-edged stone shadows and into moonlight again.
Once you shared my body. Is this like that?
"No." I spoke the word aloud, and in the wake of my voice, I heard a small scrabbling. What's that?
I'll go and see. The wolf melted into the shadows. He returned instantly. It's only the Scentless One. He hides from you. He does not know you.
I knew where I would find him. I took my time. This body had all it could do to move, let alone move swiftly. When I came to Girl-on-a-Dragon, it was horribly hard to clamber up on her dais. Once I was up, I could see the fresh rock chips everywhere. I sat down by the dragon's feet, a cautious lowering of my body to cold stone. I looked at his work. He had almost cut her free. "Fool?" I called out softly in the night.
He came slowly, from the shadows, to stand eyes down before me. "My king," he said softly. "I tried. But I cannot help myself. I cannot just leave her here …."
I nodded slowly, wordlessly. At the base of the dais, Nighteyes whined. The Fool glanced down at him, then back up at me. Puzzlement crossed his face. "My lord?" he asked.
I reached for the thread of Skill-bond between us and found it. The Fool's face grew very still as he struggled to understand. He came to sit beside me. He stared at me, as if he could see through Verity's skin. "I like this not," he said at last.
"Nor I," I agreed.
"Why have you …"
"Better not to know," I said briefly.
For a time we sat in silence. Then the Fool reached back to brush a handful of fresh stone chips from about the dragon's foot. He met my eyes, but there was still furtiveness as he drew a chisel from his shirt. His hammer was a stone.
"That's Verity's chisel."
"I know. He doesn't need it anymore, and my knife broke." He set the edge carefully to the rock. "It works much better anyway." I watched him tap another small chip free. I aligned my thoughts with his.
"She draws on your strength," I observed quietly.
"I know." Another chip came free. "I was curious. And my touch hurt her." He placed his chisel again. "I feel I owe her something."
"Fool. She could take all you offer her and it would still not be enough."
"How do you know?"
I shrugged. "This body knows."
Then I stared as he laid his Skill-fingers to the place where he had chiseled. I winced, but sensed no pain from her. She took something from him. But he had not the Skill to shape her with his hands. What he gave her was only enough to torment her.
"She reminds me of my older sister," he said into the night. "She had golden hair."
I sat in stunned silence. He did not look at me as he added, "I should have liked to see her again. She used to spoil me outrageously. I would have liked to have seen all my family again." His tone was no more than wistful as he moved his fingers idly against the chiseled stone.
"Fool? Let me try?"
He gave me a look that was almost jealous. "She may not accept you," he warned me.
I smiled at him. Verity's smile, through his beard. "There is a link between us. Fine as thread and neither the elfbark nor your weariness aid it. But it is there. Put your hand to my shoulder."
I did not know why I did it. Perhaps because he had never before spoken to me of a sister or a home he missed. I refused to stop and wonder. Not thinking was so much easier, and not feeling was easiest of all. He put his unskilled hand, not to my shoulder, but to the side of my neck. Instinctively, he was right. Skin to skin, I knew him better. I held Verity's silver hands up before my eyes and marveled at them. Silver to the eye, scalded and raw to the senses. Then, before I could change my mind, I reached down and grasped the dragon's shapeless forefoot between my two hands.
Instantly, I could feel the dragon. Almost it squirmed within the stone. I knew the edge of each scale, the tip of each wicked claw. And I knew the woman who had carved it. The women. A coterie, so long ago. Salt's Coterie. But Salt had been too proud. Her features were on the carven face, and she had sought to remain in her own form, carving herself upon the dragon that her coterie shaped around her. They had been too loyal to object. And almost she had succeeded. The dragon had been finished, and almost filled. The dragon had quickened and began to rise as the coterie was absorbed into it. But Salt had striven to remain only within the carved girl. She had held back from the dragon. And the dragon had fallen before it could even rise, sinking back into the stone, miring down forever. Leaving the coterie trapped in the dragon and Salt trapped in the girl.
All this I knew, swifter than lightning. I felt too, the hunger of the dragon. It pulled at me, pleading for sustenance. Much had it taken from the Fool. I sensed what he had given, light and dark. The jeering taunts of gardeners and chamberlains when he was young at Buckkeep. A branch of apple blossoms outside a window in spring. An image of me, my jerkin flapping as I hurried across the yard at Burrich's heels, trying to make my shorter legs match his long stride. A silver fish leaping above a silent pond at dawn.
The dragon tugged at me insistently. I suddenly knew what had really drawn me here. Take my memories of my mother, and the feelings that went with them. I do not want to know them at all. Take the ache in my throat when I think of Molly, take all the sharp-edged, bright-colored days I recall with her. Take their brilliance and leave me but the shadows of what I saw and felt. Let me recall them without cutting myself on their sharpness. Take my days and nights in Regal's dungeons. It is enough to know what was done to me. Take it to keep, and let me stop feeling my face against that stone floor, hearing the sound of my nose breaking, smelling and tasting my own blood. Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone. Take my-
Fitz. Stop. You give her too much, there will be nothing left of you. The Fool's voice inside me was horror-stricken at what he had encouraged.
-memories of that tower-top, of the bare windswept Queen's Garden and Galen standing over me. Take that image of Molly going so willingly to Burrich's arms. Take it and quench it and seal it away where it can never sear me again. Take
My brother. Enough.
Nighteyes was suddenly between me and the dragon. I knew I still gripped that scaly foreleg, but he snarled at it, defying it to take more of me.
I do not care if it all is taken, I told Nighteyes.
But I do. I would sooner not be bonded with a Forged one. Get back, Cold One. He snarled in spirit as well as beside me.
To my surprise the dragon yielded. My companion nipped at my shoulder. Let go. Get away from that!
I let go of the dragon's foreleg. I opened my eyes, surprised to find it was still night all around me.
The Fool had his arm around Nighteyes. "Fitz," he said quietly. He spoke into the wolf's ruff, but I heard him clearly. "Fitz, I am sorry. But you cannot throw away all your pain. If you stop feeling pain …"
I did not listen to the rest of what he said. I stared at the dragon's foreleg. Where my two hands had rested against the lumpy stone there were two handprints now. Within those shapes, each scale stood fine and perfect. All of that, I thought. All of that, and this is how much dragon it brought me. Then I thought of Verity's dragon. It was immense. How had he done it? What had he held inside him, all those years, to have enough for the shaping of such a dragon?
"He feels much, your uncle. Great loves. Vast loyalty. Sometimes I think that my two hundred-odd years pale beside what he has felt in his forty-some."
All three of us turned to Kettle. I felt no surprise. I had known she was coming and I had not cared. She leaned heavily on a stick and her face seemed to hang from the bones of her skull. She met my eyes and I knew that she knew everything. Skill linked as she was to Verity, she knew it all. "Get down from there. All of you, before you hurt yourselves."
We obeyed slowly and I slowest of all. Verity's joints ached and his body was weary. Kettle looked at me balefully when I finally stood beside her. "If you were going to do that, you might have put it in Verity's dragon instead," she pointed out.
"He wouldn't let me. You wouldn't let me."
"No. We wouldn't have. Let me tell you something, Fitz. You are going to miss what you gave away. You will recover some of the feelings in time, of course. All memories are connected, and like a man's skin, they can heal. In time, left to themselves, those memories would have stopped hurting you. You may someday wish you could call up that pain."
"I do not think so," I said calmly, to cover my own doubt. "I still have plenty of pain left."
Kettle lifted her old face to the night. She drew a long breath in through her nose. "Dawn comes," she said, as if she had scented it. "You must return to the dragon. To Verity's dragon. And you two," her head swiveled to regard the Fool and Nighteyes. "You two should go up to that lookout point and see if Regal's troops are in sight yet. Nighteyes, you let Fitz know what you see. Go on, both of you. And Fool. You leave Girl-on-a-Dragon alone after this. You would have to give her your entire life. And even then, it might not be enough. That being so, stop torturing yourself. And her. Go on, now!"
They went, but not without some backward looks. "Come on," Kettle ordered me tersely. She began to hobble back the way she had come. I followed, walking as stiffly as she, through the black and silver shadows of the blocks that littered the quarry. She looked every bit of her two hundred-odd years. I felt even older. Aching body, joints that caught and creaked. I lifted my hand and scratched my ear. Then I snatched it down, chagrined. Verity would have a silver ear now. Already the skin of it burned, and it seemed the distant night insects chirred more loudly now.
"I am sorry, by the way. About your Molly girl and all. I did try to tell you."
Kettle did not sound sorry. But I understood that now. Almost all of her feelings were in the dragon. She spoke of what she knew she would have felt, once. She still had pain for me, but she no longer recalled any pain of her own to compare it with. I only, asked, quietly, "Is there nothing private anymore?"
"Only the things we keep from ourselves," she replied sadly. She looked over at me. "It is a good thing you do this night. A kind thing." Her lips started to smile but her eyes teared. "To give him one last night of youth and passion." She studied me, the set look on my face. "I shall say no more of it, then."
I walked the rest of the way beside her in silence.
I sat by the warm embers of last night's fire and watched the dawn come. The shrilling of night insects changed gradually to the morning challenges of distant birds. I could hear them very well now. It was strange, I thought, to sit and wait for myself. Kettle said nothing. She breathed deep of the changing scent of the air as night turned to dawn and watched the lightening of the sky with avid eyes. Storing it all up to put into the dragon.
I heard the grate of boot against stone and looked up. I watched myself coming. My stride was confident and brisk, my head up. My face was freshly washed, my wet hair slicked back from my brow into a warrior's tail. Verity wore my body well.
Our eyes met in the early light. I saw my eyes narrow as Verity appraised his own body. I stood up and without thinking, began to brush my clothes off. Then I realized what I was doing. This was not a shirt I had borrowed. My laugh boomed out, louder than I used it. Verity shook my head at me.
"Leave it, boy. There's no making it better. And I'm almost finished with it anyway." He slapped my chest with the palm of my hand. "Once I had a body like this," he told me, as if I hadn't known. "I had forgotten so much of how that felt. So much." The smile faded from his face as he regarded me peering at him from his own eyes. "Take care of it, Fitz. You only get one. To keep, anyway."
A wave of giddiness. Black closed from the edges of my vision, and I folded up my knees and sank down to keep from falling.
"Sorry," Verity said quietly, and it was in his own voice.
I looked up to find him looking down on me. I stared up at him mutely. I could smell Kettricken's scent on my skin. My body was very tired. I knew a moment of total outrage. Then it crested and fell away as if the emotion were too much effort. Verity's eyes met mine and accepted all I felt.
"I will neither apologize to you nor thank you. Neither would be adequate." He shook his head to himself. "And in truth, how could I say I am sorry? I am not." He looked away from me, out over my head. "My dragon will rise. My queen will bear a child. I will drive the Red-Ships from our shore." He took a deep breath. "No. I am not sorry for our bargain." His eyes came back to me. "FitzChivalry. Are you sorry?"
Slowly I stood up. "I don't know." I tried to decide. "The roots of it go too deep," I said at last. "Where would I start to undo my past? How far back would I have to reach, how much would I have to change in order to change this, or to say I was not sorry now?"
The road is empty below us. Nighteyes spoke in my mind.
I know. Kettle knows, too. She but looked for something to busy the Fool and sent you along to keep him safe. You can come back now.
Oh. Are you all right?
"FitzChivalry. Are you all right?" There was concern in Verity's voice. But it could not completely mask the triumph there as well.
"Of course not," I told them both. "Of course not." I walked away from the dragon.
Behind me, I heard Kettle ask eagerly, "Are we ready to quicken him?"
Verity's soft voice carried to my ears. "No. Not just yet. For a little while longer, I would have these memories to myself. For a short time more, I would remain a man."
As I passed through the camp, Kettricken emerged from her tent. She wore the same travel-wearied tunic and leggings she had the day before. Her hair was caught back from her face in a short, thick braid. There were still lines in her brow and at the corners of her mouth. But her face had the warm luminescence of the finest pearls. Renewed faith shone in her. She took a deep breath of the morning air and smiled at me radiantly.
I hurried past her.
The stream water was very cold. Coarse horsetail grasses grew along one bank. I used handfuls of them to scrub myself. My wet clothes were draped on the bushes on the other side of the stream. The heat of the day promised they would soon be dry. Nighteyes sat on the bank and watched me with a pucker between his eyes.
I do not understand. You do not smell bad.
Nighteyes. Go hunting. Please.
You wish to be alone?
As much as that is possible anymore.
He stood up and stretched, curtseying low to me as he did so.
Someday, it will be only you and I We shall hunt and eat and sleep. And you will heal.
May we both live to see that, I agreed wholeheartedly.
The wolf slipped off through the trees. Experimentally, I scrubbed at the Fool's fingerprints on my wrist. They did not come off, but I learned a great deal about the life cycle of a horsetail fern. I gave it up. I decided I could take my entire skin off and still not feel free of what had happened. I waded out of the stream, dashing the water off myself as I went. My clothing was dry enough to put back on. I sat down on the bank to put my boots on. I nearly thought of Molly and Burrich but I quickly pushed the image away. Instead I wondered how soon Regal's soldiers would arrive and if Verity would have his dragon finished before then. Perhaps it was even now finished. I should want to see it.
I wanted more to be alone.
I lay back on the grass and looked up into the blue sky overhead. I tried to feel something. Dread, excitement, anger. Hate. Love. Instead I felt only confused. And tired. Weary of flesh and spirit. I closed my eyes against the brightness of the sky..
The harp notes walked alongside the sounds of the stream flowing. They blended with it, then danced apart. I opened my eyes to it and squinted at Starling. She sat on the stream bank beside me and played. Her hair was down, drying in ripples down her back in the sun. She had a stem of green grass in her mouth and her bare feet nestled against the soft grass. She met my eyes but said nothing. I watched her hands play on the strings. Her left hand worked harder, compensating for the stiffness in the last two fingers. I should have felt something about that. I didn't know what.
"What good are feelings?" I didn't know I had the question until I spoke it aloud.
Her fingers poised over the strings. She furrowed her brow at me. "I don't think there's an answer to that question."
"I'm not finding answers to much of anything lately. Why aren't you back in the quarry, watching them complete the dragon? Surely that is the stuff for a song to spring from."
"Because I am here with you," she said simply. Then she grinned. "And because everyone else seems busy. Kettle sleeps. Kettricken and Verity … she was combing his hair when I left. I do not think I had seen King Verity smile before. When he does. he looks a great deal like you, about the eyes. Anyway. I do not think they will miss me."
"And the Fool?"
She shook her head. "He chips at the stone around Girl-on-a-Dragon. I know he should not, but I do not think he can stop. Nor do I know any way to force him."
"I don't think he can help her. But I don't think he can resist trying. For all his quick tongue, he has a soft nature."
"I know that. Now. In some ways I've come to know him very well. In others, he will always be unknowable to me."
I nodded silently to that. The silence lasted a time. Then, subtly, it became a different kind of silence. "Actually," Starling said uncomfortably, "the Fool suggested I should find you."
I groaned. I wondered just how much he had told her.
"I'm sorry to hear about Molly …" she began.
"But not surprised," I filled in for her. I lifted my arm and put it across my eyes to block the sunlight.
"No." She spoke quietly. "Not surprised." She cast about for something to say. "At least you know she is safe and cared for," she offered.
I knew that. It shamed me that I could find so little comfort in it. Putting it into the dragon had helped in the same way that cutting off an infected limb helped. Being rid of it was not the same as being healed of it. The empty place inside me itched. Perhaps I wanted to hurt. I watched her from the shade of my arm.
"Fitz," she said quietly. "I asked you once, for yourself. In gentleness and friendship. To chase a memory away," She looked away from me, at the sunlight glinting on the stream. "Now I offer that," she said humbly.
"But I don't love you," I said honestly. And instantly knew that it was the worst thing I could have said just then.
Starling sighed and set her harp aside. "I know that. You know that. But it was not a thing that had to be said just now."
"And I know that. Now. It is just that I don't want any lies, spoken or unspoken …"
She leaned over me and stopped my mouth with hers. After a time she lifted her face a little. "I am a minstrel. I know more about lying than you will ever discover. And minstrels know that sometimes lies are what a man needs most. In order to make a new truth of them."
"Starling," I began.
"You know you will just say the wrong thing," she told me. "So why don't you be quiet for a time? Don't make this complicated. Stop thinking, just for a while."
Actually, it was quite a while.
When I awoke, she still lay warm against my side. Nighteyes stood over us, looking down at me, panting with the heat of the day. When I opened my eyes, he folded his ears back and gave his tail a slow wag. A drop of warm saliva fell on my arm.
"Go away."
The others are calling you. And looking for you. He cocked his head at me and offered, I could show Kettricken where to find you.
I sat up and squashed three mosquitoes on my chest. They left bloody smears. I reached for my shirt. Is something wrong?
No. They are ready to wake the dragon. Verity wishes to tell you goodbye.
I shook Starling gently. "Wake up. Or you will miss Verity waking the dragon."
She stirred lazily. "For that, I shall get up. I can think of nothing else that would stir me. Besides, it may be my last chance at a song. Fate has ruled that I always be elsewhere whenever you do something interesting."
I had to smile at that. "So. You will make no songs about Chivalry's Bastard after all?" I teased her.
"One, perhaps. A love song." She gave me a last secret smile. "That part, at least, was interesting."
I stood up and drew her to her feet. I kissed her. Nighteyes whined his impatience, and she turned quickly in my arms. Nighteyes stretched and bowed low to her. When she turned back to me, her eyes were wide.
"I warned you," I told her.
She only laughed and stooped to gather up our clothes.