Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3)

Shortly. I am with the Fool right now.

It's about Old Blood. Soon, please, she says.

Soon, I replied dully.

And no sooner was Thick cleared from my mind than Chade was tapping at my shoulder. I gave him my heed and, As long as you are there, think to bring back at least some of the Skill scrolls you found there. We'll be in need of them, I think.

Chade. I will. Please. A time to myself. Please.

Very well. His reply was surly. Then he softened, asking more gently, What is the problem? Is he that ill?

Actually, he seems improved. But I need a time for my own thoughts.

Very well.

I turned back to the Fool, but he had either sunk into a true sleep or was pretending one so convincingly that I could not find it in me to try to wake him. I needed a time to think. I thought there must be some way to get him to change his mind, if only I could think of it.

“I'll be back,” I told him, and then slung my cloak over my shoulders and went out. I thought I might as well make a trip through the Elderling maze to retrieve some of the Skill scrolls. It would keep me busy while I thought. I have never done my best pondering while sitting still. I climbed the steep path and found I did not have to squeeze quite as much to get into the crack. My comings and goings were wearing it open, I thought to myself. Yet I had not gone far under the false light of the Elderling globes before I saw someone coming toward me. It startled me for the instant before I recognized the Black Man. He had a haunch of smoked meat on one shoulder, and as we drew near to one another, he nodded to me and then slung it carefully to the ground.

“Her supplies, I stole. Many times. Not like this. A little bit here, a little bit there. Now, what I want, I take.” He cocked his head at me. “And you?”

“Somewhat the same. Years ago, scrolls, special writings, were taken from my king. She has them, here, in a room near her bedchamber. I am to bring them home again.”

“Ah, those. I saw them long ago.”

“Yes.”

“I will help.”

I was not sure I wanted help, but there seemed no courteous way to refuse him. I nodded my thanks, and we walked companionably through the halls. He shook his head at the desecration of the carvings and the missing art from the empty niches. He spoke to me of the folk who had lived here in the times he had known. Thick had been right. Once, the stone hallways had been warmed. Elderlings had come and gone from this place, enjoying the wonders of the ice and snow that never reached their warmer lands. I tried to imagine taking pleasure in coming to a cold place, but the idea was foreign to me.

Prilkop had somehow unharnessed the magic that gave warmth to the stone. He had sought too to deprive the Pale Woman of the Elderling light, but had failed at that. Yet even without warmth, she had stayed. She had driven Prilkop into hiding, and shown her disdain for him and the dragon-partnered Elderlings by her encouragement of the destruction of their art.

“Yet she left the map room alone,” I pointed out to him.

“She did not know of it, perhaps. Or, not knowing the use, did not care. Of the travel portals, she knew nothing. Once, only once, to flee her I used one.” He shook his head at the memory. “So weak, so sick, so—” He put his fists to his temples and made pounding motions. “I could not come back, for many days. When I did”—he shrugged—“she had made my city hers. But now I take it back.”

He knew his city well. He took me by a different path, through narrower ways that had, perhaps, been for servants or tradesmen. In less time than I had thought possible, we turned down a hallway that led us past her bedchamber. I glanced in. Someone had been there since I last glimpsed it. I halted and stared. Every item in the room that could have been pushed over or dragged about had been. A cask of jewelry had spilled a stream of pearls and silver chains and glittering white stones across the floor. Some had settled in slow melt into the floor of the chamber. Prilkop saw me staring and calmly entered the room. “This will work,” he told me, and pulled a silk coverlet from her bed. As I watched, he knotted the corners to form a very large carry sack. Catching the sense of what he did, I found another and copied him. Then, our makeshift sacks slung across our backs, we went on to the scroll room.

I was not prepared for the sight that met me there. The racks had been deliberately pushed toward the center of the room, so that as they fell, their shelved contents spilled in a messy pile. A broken pitcher lay near them and oil drenched a number of the scrolls. The Pale Woman lay on the floor near them. She was very dead. Her blackened stick arms reminded me of insect legs. Freezing and death had darkened her countenance. She had thrown back her head and died, mouth open like a snarling cat. An Elderling light globe, pried loose from its setting, lay near the oil-soaked manuscripts. It looked battered, as if it had been kicked and beaten. For a time, Prilkop and I stared in silence.