Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3)

“I'll see that Kettricken knows of it,” I promised him without telling him how I'd attempt to do that.

“But if we have set one puzzle to rest tonight, we've only encountered a greater one. Who is he, what is he?” The Fool's voice was musing.

“The Black Man?”

“Of course.”

I shrugged. “Some recluse living on the island, accepting tribute from superstitious folk and ambushing those who don't leave him gifts. That's the simplest explanation.” Chade's teaching was that the simplest explanation was often likely to be the right one.

The Fool shook his head slowly. The look he gave me was incredulous. “No. Surely you cannot believe that. Never have I felt a man so hung about with portents . . . not since I first encountered you have I felt such a tingle of . . . of significance. He is important, Fitz, vastly important. Perhaps the most important person we have ever met. Didn't you feel his consequence, hanging like mist in the air?” He held the snow away from his face and leaned forward eagerly. A single scarlet final drop hung from the tip of his nose. I gestured at it and he wiped it carelessly on his bloodstained sleeve.

“No. I felt nothing like that. In fact—Oh, Eda and El! Why does it come to me only now? I could not see him when the sentry shouted, and when he was pointed out to me, I thought I saw but his shadow. Because I didn't sense him with my Wit. Not at all. He was as blank as a Forged One . . . He's Forged, Fool. And that means there is no predicting what he might do.”

A chill went over me despite the coziness of the tent. It had been many years since I'd had to deal with Forged Ones, but the unmerciful memories had not faded. One of my tasks as Chade's apprentice assassin had been to kill as many of them as I could, by whatever means was most expeditious. The deaths I had dealt to Six Duchies folk haunted me still, even though I knew there had been no alternative. Forging stole all humanity from its victims and was irreversible.

“Forged? Oh, surely not!” The Fool's astounded reaction broke my moment of introspection. He shook his head. “No, Fitz. Not Forged. Almost the opposite, if such a thing is possible. I felt in him the weight of a hundred lifetimes, the significance of a dozen heroes. He . . . displaces fate. Much as you do.”

“I don't understand,” I said uneasily. I hated it when the Fool spoke like this. He loved it.

He leaned forward, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. As he spoke, he lifted the kettle from the oil flame and poured steaming water into the cup and a bowl. Ginger and cinnamon wafted toward me. “All of time, every sliced instant of it, is rich with vertices of choices. One becomes accustomed to that, to the point at which sometimes even I have to stop and remind myself that I am making choices, even when I do not seem to be. Every indrawn breath is a choice. But sometimes one is reminded of that forcibly, sometimes I meet a person so laden with possibilities and potential that the mere existence of such a being is a jolt to reality. You are like that, still, to me. The sheer improbability of your existence took my breath away. I have discovered relatively few possible futures in which you exist at all. In most of them, you died as a child. In others . . . well, I do not think I need to tell you all the ways in which you have died in other times. How many times have you been snatched from the jaws of death, in the most unlikely ways? I promise you, Fitz, in other times that parallel ours, you have met your deaths at those moments. Yet here you are, with me still, defying the odds by existing. And by your existence, with every breath you take, you change all time. You are like a wedge driven into dry wood. With every beat of your heart, you are pounded deeper into ‘what might be' and as you advance, you crack the future open, and expose a hundred, a thousand new possibilities, each branching into another hundred, another thousand.” He paused for breath. Noting my disgruntled expression, he laughed aloud. “Well. Like it or not, you do, my Catalyst. And so also did he feel to me tonight, the Black Man! So many possibilities shimmered around him that I could scarcely see him. He is even more unlikely than you are!” He drew a black kerchief out of his sleeve and wiped all traces of blood from his face, and then his hands. Carefully enfolding the bloody side, he tucked it into his sleeve again. Then he leaned back on his cushions, his eyes staring into the dim shadows at the peak of his tent. “And I have not a clue as to who or what he is. I've never glimpsed him before. What does that mean? Was it only with our coming here that his influence on the future became possible?”

He picked up the steaming bowl and offered it to me, excusing it with “I only brought one cup. Traveling light, you know.” I took it from him, welcoming the warmth against my hands. With an odd jolt, I reminded myself that in the Six Duchies it was summer. Summer seemed an impotent thing here in the Out Islands, camped on a glacier. He picked up the cup and, looking around, frowned slightly. “You took my honey, didn't you? You don't happen to have it with you, do you? It brings out the flavor of the ginger and makes the tea more warming.”