Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3)

I put the Fool inside his tent, and then went back out, his kerchief in my hand, to gather up a pack of snow for him. When I returned, he had added a bit of oil to the tiny firepot, and the renewed flames danced higher, sending rippling shadows of color across the silken walls. He set a tiny kettle upon it as I watched, and then sat back on his pallet, pinching his nostrils shut with one bloody hand. His nose had almost stopped bleeding but his face was starting to darken where Civil's fists had landed. He leaned back gingerly as if the entire left side of his body were sore.

“Try this,” I told him. I sat down beside him and gently pressed the cold compress against the side of his face. He turned away from it.

“Please don't! It's icy and I'm already too cold,” he complained. Wearily he added, “I'm too cold all the time in this place.”

“Nevertheless,” I told him relentlessly. “Just until your nose stops bleeding. And it will keep your face from swelling too much. You'll probably have a black eye anyway.”

“Please, Fitz,” he protested feebly and reached up, bare-handed, to seize my wrist in the same moment that my fingertips brushed his cheek.

The impact of that mutual touch blinded me for an instant, just as if I had stepped out of a dim stable into full direct sunlight. I twitched away from him, the snow bundle falling to the tent floor, and blinked, but the image of what I had seen was imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. I cannot say how I knew what it was I had glimpsed. Perhaps something in that closed circle of touching told me. I drew a shaky breath and reached recklessly toward his face with outstretched fingers.

“I can heal you,” I told him, amazed and breathless with the discovery. The knowledge of my newfound power rushed through my blood, hot as whiskey. “I see what is wrong, the bits that are broken and how the blood pools under your skin where it should not. Fool, I can use the Skill and heal you.”

Again he seized my wrist, but this time it was to hold my hand wide of his face. Again, I felt jolted by that sense of connection as his Skill-imbued fingertips made contact with my skin. He shifted his grip quickly to the cuff of my sleeve. “No,” he said quietly, but a smile played over his swollen face. “Did you learn nothing from the ‘healing' that we put you through? I have no reserves to burn for the sake of a swift healing. I'll let my own body mend itself, in its own way and time.” He let go of my wrist. “But thank you,” he added quietly, “for offering.”

A shudder ran over me, as when a horse shakes flies from his coat. I blinked at him, feeling as if I had just awakened. The temptation was slower to fade. There was, I thought wryly, much of Chade in me. Knowing that I could do a thing made me itch to do it. Looking at his bruised face was like looking at a picture hung crooked on a wall. The impulse to right it was instinctive. I sighed. Resolutely, I crossed my arms on my chest and leaned back from him.

“You see it, don't you?” he asked me.

I nodded, and then he shocked me, for his mind was on something completely different. “Word must be sent to the Queen, somehow. Sydel, I think, is innocent. She deserves rescue, and after the misery I have helped cause her, I hope she receives it. I dare not guess which of her parents is the Piebald who worked with Laudwine. Perhaps both did. Sydel is shamed for accidentally falling in with our plans. And Civil is no longer seen as an appropriate match for her, for he has sided with the Farseers.”

Of course. The connections were all there, plain to see when the Fool pointed them out. I reconsidered her parents' apparent reaction to “Lord Golden's” interest in their daughter. Her mother had seemed avid to take advantage of it; her father more cautious. Had they seen him as someone who could give the Piebalds access to Buckkeep society? As a benefactor whose wealth might forward their cause?

“Why didn't Civil just tell Dutiful, months ago?” I felt outraged. My prince had forgiven Civil, had welcomed him back as a comrade and friend, and he had held back from us this key piece of information.

The Fool shook his head. “I don't think Dutiful realizes the full implications, even now. Perhaps some part of him suspects, but he doesn't dare let himself see it. He is true Old Blood, not Piebald. What they did is so monstrous by his standards that he cannot imagine Sydel being connected to such a plot.” He leaned over and picked up the snowbag from the floor, regarded it dolefully, and then put it gingerly to the swollen side of his face. “I'm so tired of being cold,” he remarked. One-handed, he opened a small wooden box at the end of his pallet, and took out a cup and a bowl that nested together. From beneath them, he took a small cloth bag and shook herbs from it into the cup and bowl. He went on. “It's the only way I can make the pieces fit. Sydel is disgraced in her father's eyes; the engagement is broken. Civil assumes her father caught her in my bed. It is the only explanation he can imagine, and so he blames me for ruining all that was between them. But that isn't it at all. One or both of her parents are Piebalds. They used their close ties with the Bresinga household to intercept messages meant for Civil and return their own. They saw to it that the Prince was hosted invisibly within that household. The gift of the cat for Dutiful was probably delivered through them. The plan for Civil was that he'd wed their daughter, bringing his family's wealth and position to the Piebald cause. Then she failed them, by flirting with me. And we were the mechanism for the whole downfall of that first Piebald plan. That is how she is disgraced.” He gave a sigh, leaned back on his bedding, and moved the kerchief to a different spot on his face. “It's small comfort to have worked it out now.”