Fool's Fate (Tawny Man #3)

He waved me away. As I departed, I heard a breathy sigh of music. He was playing, very softly, a child's tune on his pipes. Had he instinctively known that might soothe Thick? I wondered why I hadn't thought of music as a way to comfort him. I sighed. I was becoming too set in my ways. I needed to remember how to be flexible.

I went to the galley in hopes of begging something hot to eat. Instead I got hard bread and a piece of cheese no bigger than two fingers. The cook let me know I could consider myself fortunate for being allowed that. She didn't have food to waste, she didn't, not aboard this top-heavy, overpopulated tub. I had hoped for washwater, just enough to splash the salt from my hands and face, but she told me I hadn't a prayer of that. I'd had my share for the day, hadn't I? I should take what I was issued and be happy with it. Guardsmen. No idea what life aboard a vessel required of a man in self-discipline.

I retreated from her sharp tongue. I longed to stay abovedecks to eat, but I was out of my territory there, and the sailors were in a mood to prove it to me. So I went below, down to where the rest of the guard snored and muttered and played cards by the swinging light of a lantern. Our days at sea had not improved the smell of our quarters. I found that Riddle had not exaggerated the ill humor of the men. The comments of one man on “the returning nursemaid” would have been enough justification for a fight if I'd wanted one. I didn't, and managed to shed his insults, eat my food hastily, and dig my blanket out of my sea chest. Finding a place to stretch out was impossible. Prone guardsmen littered the floor. I curled up in their midst. I would have preferred to sleep with my back to a wall, but there was no hope of that. I eased off my boots and loosened my belt. The man next to me muttered nastily and rolled over as I tried to settle on the deck and cover most of myself with my blanket. I closed my eyes and breathed out, reaching desperately for unconsciousness, grateful for the opportunity to close my eyes and sleep. At least in my dreams I could escape this nightmare.

But as I crossed the dim territory between wakefulness and sleep, I recognized that perhaps I held the solution to my problems. Instead of wallowing my way into full sleep, I slid sideways through it, seeking Nettle.

My task was harder than I had expected. Thick's music was here, and finding my way through it was like blundering through brambles in a fog. No sooner did I think of that than the sounds sprouted tendrils and thorns. Music should not hurt a man, but this did. I staggered through a fog of sickness, hunger, and thirst, my spine tight with cold and my head pounding with the discordant music that snatched and dragged at me. After a time I halted. “It's a dream,” I said to myself, and the brambles writhed mockingly at my words. As I stood still, pondering my situation, they began to wrap around my legs. “It's a dream,” I said again. “It can't hurt me.” But my words did not prevail. I felt the thorns bite through my leggings into my flesh as I staggered forward. They tightened their grip and held me fast.

I halted again, fighting for calm. What had begun as Thick's Skill-suggestion was now my own nightmare. I straightened up against the weight of the thorny vines trying to pull me down, reached to my hip and drew Verity's sword. I slashed at the brambles and they gave way, wriggling away like severed snakes. Encouraged, I gave the sword a blade of flame that singed the writhing plants and lit my way through the encroaching fog. “Go uphill,” I told myself. “Only the valleys are full of mist. The hilltops will be clean and bare.” And it was so.

When I finally struggled clear of Thick's Skill-fog, I found myself at the edges of Nettle's dream. I stood staring up at a glass tower on the hilltop above me. I recognized the tale. The hillside above me was littered with tangling threads. As I waded in, they clung like spiderweb. I knew that Nettle was aware of me. Nonetheless, she left me to my own devices, and I floundered through the ankle-deep tangle that represented all the broken promises her false lovers had made to the princess. In the old tale, only a truehearted man could tread such a path without falling.

In the dream, I had become the wolf. All four of my legs were soon bound by the clinging stuff and I must needs stop and chew myself clear of it. For some reason, the thread tasted of anise, a pleasant enough flavor in moderation, but choking by the mouthful. When I finally reached the glass tower and looked up at her, my chest was wet and my jaws dripped saliva. I gave myself a shake, droplets flying, and then asked her, “Aren't you going to invite me to come up?”

She did not reply. She leaned on the parapet of her balcony and stared out over the countryside. I looked behind me, down to where the brambles waved above the banked fog in the deep valleys. Was the fog creeping closer? When Nettle continued to ignore me, I trotted around the base of the tower. In the old tale, there was no door and Nettle had re-created it faithfully. Did that mean she had had a lover who had been faithless to her? My heart turned over in me and for a moment I forgot the purpose of my visit. When I had circled the tower, I sat down on my haunches and looked up at the figure on the balcony. “Who has betrayed you?” I asked her.