Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy #2)

Malta came back into the room, carrying some flat yellow cakes on a platter. Two servants came behind her, bringing a roasted bird and a heaped mound of the dark-orange roots we’d had at dinner. The boy’s eyes lit to see them, and his father laughed out loud as he hastily seated himself. He did not wait, but took one of the yellow cakes and bit into it. It was crisp to the point of breaking, and he devoured it with unabashed pleasure as a beaming servant forked a thick slab of meat onto a plate for him and mounded vegetables beside it. He spoke to me around and through a mouthful. “I haven’t been able to eat easily for more than a year. My throat had grown so tight and small inside. It burned when I swallowed. Soup. I could get down thin soup. That was all.”

“You had … they would have been right. In a dragon. They grew as if …” I felt very awkward saying it. I knew I’d seen them earlier, in the green dragon’s open maw. “Sacs,” I said. “For spitting poison, I think. Growing in your throat.”

“What did you do? And how?” Malta was regarding me with wonder. Wonder touched with fear.

Amber spoke over my head. “Prince FitzChivalry has the hereditary magic of the Farseer line. Of the royal blood. He can heal.”

“Sometimes!” I added hastily. “Only sometimes.” I found the brandy. My hand was steady enough to pick it up, and I had some.

“I think,” Reyn spoke slowly, “that I would like for all of us to sit down. I’d like to hear Lady Amber’s tale. To know why you came here. And how.”

She squeezed my shoulders, cautioning me to silence, just as Molly would have if she’d thought I was about to offer too much coin for a market purchase. “It would greatly please me to tell you all,” she said, and I was just as glad to let her. I felt relief when she let go of me and we were seated round the table again. Lant had taken his seat and remained remarkably quiet.

A tale the Fool told him, in the voice of a steady and practical woman. She and I were old friends, she began.

“That I guessed,” Malta said knowingly. “When first I saw him, I felt as if I already knew him.” She smiled at me as if we shared a jest. I smiled back, without understanding.

Amber’s tale skirted and leapt and wove through the truth. She’d come to Buckkeep, and there had a lovely time with all the beautiful money that Jek had sent to her from Bingtown. Too lovely a time, with too much fine brandy (and here she paused to take a sip of golden Sandsedge) and too many games of chance where neither cards nor dice nor scattering pins favored her. She’d lost her fortune and decided to return to her homeland to reunite with her family and to visit friends. Instead she’d encountered old enemies. They’d taken over her ancestral home, and injured her kin. They’d captured her, and tormented her. Blinding her had neither been the least nor the worst of what they did to her. When she could, she escaped them. And fled back to me. To one who could avenge her, and help her free those still kept captive. To FitzChivalry Farseer, a man as adept at killing as he was at healing.

The tale had enraptured all of them, even Lant. It came to me that this contorted version of the truth of the Fool’s tale was more than he’d heard of it before. Phron was now looking at me with a youngster’s wonder. Reyn sat, elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, and his fingers splayed across his mouth. I could not decide what he was thinking, but Malta was nodding to Amber’s words, and accepted her claims for me with no argument. I controlled my face but ruefully wished she were less extravagant in her praise of me.

So I was dismayed by Malta’s words when the Fool paused to sip brandy. “There are other children,” she said. She looked directly at me. “Not many. The children born here in Kelsingra are few, and even fewer survive. If you could do for them what you did for Phron, you could ask of us almost any—”

“Malta, he is a guest—” her husband began, in rebuke, but she interrupted with, “And they are children who suffer daily, and their parents with them. How can I not ask for it?”

“I understand.” I said it swiftly, before the Fool could speak. “But I cannot make any promises. What Amber called a healing is more of … an adjustment. It may not be permanent. I may not be able to help any of the other children.”

“We need—” Amber began but I cut her off recklessly.

“We need nothing in return for helping children. The lives of children are not bargaining chips.”

“We need,” Amber resumed calmly, “not speak of any bargain or desire of ours until after FitzChivalry has done what he can for the children.” She turned her blinded visage toward me. “That goes without saying.”